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Thoughts on
Antarctica The Ends of
the World – Part One
Antarctica is infinitely inspiring and
endlessly sublime, all at the same time. There is nothing anywhere else that
can prepare you for the experience.
I have been to Glacier Bay, Alaska, and as
wondrous as that place is, every minor cove and inlet in Antarctica is its
equal, and the major places in Antarctica dwarf it by orders of magnitude. In
just a few days, we sailed past a thousand Glacier Bays and yet had not seen
even one-thousandth of Antarctica. I have seen the Tetons, Yellowstone, the
Grand Canyon, the Great Sequoias, the Great Smoky Mountains, Glacier National
Park, Yosemite, the Alps and many, many more incredible places. Antarctica
overshadows them all in awesome wonder.
For the photographer, Antarctica is a
“target rich environment,” to use a military term. No matter where you look,
every view is stunning and gripping, irresistible to the photographer’s eye.
Everywhere, everywhere there is a sight compelling and spectacular.
In my travels in Antarctica, all this
incredible and vast scenery was based on just as incredible a simplicity.
There were just two basic color schemes to the landscape: gray and blue. When
the weather was bad or overcast, everything was in a million shades of gray,
melancholy gray unlike any you have ever seen. Gray mountains, gray ice, gray
water, gripping and somber.
Once the sun would appear, even just a
shaft of it, everything turned to blues, stunning rainbows of blue streaming
to white. Blinding whitish-blue ice spanning the scale of all blues to deep,
hypnotic cobalt. Sapphire water in a thousand shades. Blue skies unlike any
other blue sky. On a sunny day, the sky in Antarctica is so blue it is hard
to imagine. The deepest, clearest, cleanest blue skies anywhere in America
pale in comparison. Photographers use polarizing filters on their lens in
order to make blue skies deeper and darker in their photographs; it is a
standard technique that every professional or serious amateur photographer
uses. When I put the polarizer on my lens in Antarctica, I could not tell a
difference. The sky was already an azure so deep and rich that the filter
added nothing at all.
In the 2005-2006 tourism season,
Antarctica will receive approximately 30,000 tourist visitors, with about
25,000 of those actually setting foot on land; 22,926 set foot on the
continent in the 2004-2005 season. The rest will merely sail by on large
cruise ships or fly over. Ten years ago, the number of tourists was about
9,300. Any ship with more than 500 passengers is forbidden from putting
anyone ashore, and ships with 200-500 passengers can only stop at select
sites. No more than 100 visitors are allowed on shore at any one time, and
only one ship can visit one place at a time. Still, on our trip, we saw four
other tourist vessels at one time or another, and two of them we saw twice.
There are many places in America and the
world that receive more than 25,000 visitors every day. The Great Smoky
Mountains National Park receives, on average, around 25,000 visitors every
day, and during peak Summer and Fall color weekends, the daily number soars
past that mark. So while 25,000 a year does not seem like much of a number by
itself, it is a heavy burden on the fragile Antarctic environment. This
tourism will only grow; estimates are that the visitorship will reach 80,000
by 2010 (www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/news/2005-2/102505tourism.shtml).
Tourism is not directly regulated by any
one government, as there is no “government” in Antarctica. The Antarctic
Treaty makes requirements on its member signatory nations to provide some
regulation of operators taking tourists to the continent, but the policing of
these measures is unsure, at best. The International Association of
Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO)(www.iaato.org)
covers the vast majority of companies taking tourists to Antarctica. As an
environmental protection attorney, I am quite familiar with the failures of
many “self-regulated” industries, but IAATO appears much more impressive than
most. At the very least, it is clear that if you go to Antarctica with a
company that is not a member of IAATO, you are risking doing more harm than
you should. On my trip to Antarctica, the commitment to environmental
protection displayed by the crew and expedition staff was the highest I have
ever seen anywhere; the references to IAATO and Antarctic Treaty requirements
were frequent and were treated as binding, even if in reality they are not.
Handled properly and very carefully,
Antarctica may be able to survive the increasing level of tourism impact.
Maybe not. But the impacts of tourists like me at any level can only be
acceptable if we tourists become much more than the passive visitor the
tourist usually is. Despite being a tourist in Antarctica, I felt like the
experience was much more than tourism or recreation, that the place made me
more than a tourist. I am now an ambassador for Antarctica. The experience
has imposed a wonderful duty and responsibility upon me. In the old gospel
vernacular, I am called to witness for Antarctica.
This statement from me about Antarctica is
my first witness to what the place is and to what must be done to protect it.
I have traveled a great deal, and with
most trips, I return home with fond memories, and hopefully some good
photographs, of the places I went. But with Antarctica, I have also returned
with a burning, insatiable desire to go back. Not some day, but NOW! In
spare moments, I surf websites that have trips for later this year and early
next year. Every day I check the weather forecasts and satellite weather
images for Ushuaia, Palmer Station, and McMurdo. I pull out the calculator
and figure ways to pay for another journey, regardless of the fact that it
took me nearly a lifetime to save the money for the first trip there. If I
forego all pizza and beer for ten months, that gives me $1,100 dollars.
Skipping lunch four times a week nets me $960. It is insane.
Yet, I feel this powerful need to see more
of Antarctica, and to see again the places I just journeyed to this time. It
is not a fond remembrance I have but an overwhelming fervor, as if I will be
damned for eternity if I do not go back soon. I cannot explain it. It defies
logic and reasoning. It is easy now to understand why Antarctic tourism is
booming; go once and you have to go again. You tell everyone
you know how incredible it is; then they want to go. It is a problem that
feeds itself endlessly and intensely. The dichotomy between the calling to be
a conservation ambassador for Antarctica and the insatiable desire to return
is irreconcilable. To go back would be to increase my impacts on the
continent. To go back would also be to increase my knowledge and experience
for use in protecting it. I am torn.
I will ponder it and write more later.
Things You Can Do:
Learn more about Antarctica, and even if
you never go, help educate people about it and the need to protect it:
Help the organizations that are working to
protect Antarctica, its history and its wildlife:
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Save the Albatross --
www.savethealbatross.net. Long-line fishing done improperly is
threatening nearly all the beautiful albatross species in the world.
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Antarctica Heritage Trust --
www.heritage-antarctica.org.
Promotes the restoration, preservation and protection of the structures,
artifacts and records which reflect the history of human endeavor in
Antarctica, as a means to increase understanding of the importance of the
Antarctic environment and as an inspiration for future generations
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2041.com --
www.2041.com.
Robert Swan, the first person to walk to both the North and South Poles, and
his foundation lead international groups to the Antarctic. The teams consist
of up and coming corporate leaders, entrepreneurs in the field of renewable
energy and journalists. Teachers and disadvantaged students also accompany him
on the voyages and participate in the opening of the first Education Base
(E-Base) in Antarctica. He hopes that they will experience first hand the
importance of preserving Antarctica and protecting the environment for future
generations. The knowledge they take back to their businesses, schools and
communities will be crucial in expanding local and global awareness on
sustainable living and the environment. 2041 is the year that the
Environmental Protocol of the Antarctic Treaty comes up for review. At
that point, unless the protocol is renewed, Antarctica would be opened to
mining, drilling and other damaging exploitation.
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To my knowledge, there are no
other general-interest NGOs working solely on the conservation and protection of
Antarctic. There are plenty of governmental and scientific organizations
working on the continent, but conservation groups only work there
occasionally, such as Greenpeace’s campaign in the 1990s to get the Antarctic
Treaty renewed and improved. Having founded a number of conservation
organizations, such as WildLaw, I am of half a mind to start one specifically
for Antarctica. As good as IAATO and the treaty nations may be doing, it
never hurts to have a watchdog as an independent monitor and verifier of
duties, actions and claims of compliance. Plus, an independent NGO can
bolster the case against illegal fishing and rouge tourism operations in ways
that the nations and the IAATO companies cannot do themselves. If you would
like to help with the formation of such a group, let me know, and once my mind
is whole, I will let you know what I will do.
wildlaw@aol.com Thanks.
Copyright 2006 by Ray Vaughan. |
