I so appreciated this article in The Conversation, about Antarctic tour guides who are quitting their jobs because tourism, which used to be more about seeing the wonders of the continent, is now more about seeing it before it melts — despite these same visitors apparently doing very little to help the last continent avoid this fate (“While tour operators often argue that visiting Antarctica can heighten tourists’ awareness of environmental issues, former guides were struck by guests’ ignorance of human impacts”).
“For anyone interested in nature, few jobs sound more enviable. You spend months among penguins, orcas and glaciers, helping visitors experience one of the world’s most extraordinary and unspoiled places.
But for some guides … [w]atching climate change unfold while helping thousands more visitors reach the continent eventually led them to leave the jobs they’d once dreamed of.”
Antarctic tourism is definitely growing way too fast; when I visited in 2004, there were 20,000 visitors a season — last season, there were 120,000. Within a decade, the continent is predicted to see 450,000. Which is astonishing (not in a good way).
One former tour guide said: “Very often, for long periods of time, the penguins had maybe a few hours’ break during the night. Otherwise there were hundreds of people walking through the colonies non-stop.”
This is an important article, especially for anyone who’s considering a visit to Antarctica. As one guide said, “To this day, Antarctica … stays in the forefront of my head as the most incredibly raw environment that deserves all the care and protection. And I just think tourism and us being there was doing the opposite of that completely.”
If you’re interested in saving the planet, by all means, go to Antarctica if you can. Learn about the effects of human-induced climate change on this magnificent continent and the animals who live there. Learn why we cannot consume seafood and krill supplements while also expecting to see penguins a decade or two from now. Learn everything that’s at stake and why it is so incredibly important to turn things around before it’s too late … then come home and be the change our planet needs.
When I first became obsessed with penguins about 20 years ago, after an expedition to Antarctica and then volunteering for a penguin census in Argentina, there were 17 species of penguin, according to this Penguin Bible. And, because you must know this, here they are, divided by group:
Galápagos penguins off the coast of Floreana Island
Around the time I was getting to know penguins, the rockhoppers began to be recognized as two different species — and while Penguins lists the macaroni and the royal penguins as one species, some ornithologists consider them to be two species, which brings the number to 18.
Chinstrap penguins on the Antarctic peninsula
In addition, some research advocates splitting the southern rockhopper penguin into two species (eastern and western). Other evidence indicates the little penguin should be considered two species as well.
It’s all quite fascinating … and even with my penguin obsession I’m having a hard time keeping track. I hope one day to meet all the species of the penguin world … and this new information definitely makes my plans a bit more interesting.
But for now, the official number is 18. And counting.
And if you want to meet some penguins without getting on a plane, here’s where you can find them in my novels!
For Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, and Magellanic penguins — and a lone emperor:
For Galápagos penguins:
And stay tuned! While I didn’t plan to be a penguin novelist, I just can’t seem to escape them. Since writing My Last Continent and Floreana, I’ve been fortunate to meet little/blue penguins, Tawaki, yellow-eyed penguins, and most recently, the shy and elusive Humboldts.
The march of the Humboldt penguins in southern Peru
This startling subhead appeared in a recent Atlantic article about Antarctic travel, in a story that makes very good points about how and why travel to the last continent is becoming a lot less sustainable.
In the eyes of many, we have indeed reached the tipping point. The Atlantic story is just one of several I’ve read lately highlighting concerns with tourism in Antarctica
An Antarctic iceberg melting from below
I was so fortunate to have been able to see this majestic continent nearly two decades ago, and I’ve always responded to readers’ questions about Antarctic travel in a positive way, in part because it is hardly fair to discourage people to go when I myself have been there.
But I also believe that the continent has many other problems that need solving — and that travel to the continent can, in fact, inspire visitors to save what they are bound to fall in love with: the ice, the wildlife, the pristine wilderness that exists nowhere else on Earth.
While decades ago, the human impact of travelers in Antarctica was small, now the impacts are greater — not only the carbon footprint of getting to the bottom of the world, but the introduction of bacteria, invasive species, and the effects on wildlife. As this article points out, “A recent study found elevated concentrations of black carbon – soot – in the snow around popular Antarctic tourism sites, which causes snow to darken and melt more rapidly. Researchers have also identified 14 non-native species around the Antarctic Peninsula, transported on clothing and in food.”
The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) does an excellent job of encouraging sustainable travel and minimizing impact (yet it does remain a voluntary membership, and not all tour operators are members — those who do travel to Antarctica should be sure their tour company abides by all sustainable travel guidelines).
Ever since My Last Continent was first published, seven years ago, I’ve been pointing out that while tourism does affect the continent, Antarctica has bigger problems: global warming, overfishing, pollution from the fishing industry (from oil spills to discarded fishing gear). My own trip to Antarctica was life-changing — and the continent offers this experience to every potential visitor. If people return from Antarctica with a passion for tackling climate change, protecting endangered species, and making the world a better place, does this not make the trip worthwhile?
It’s not likely that every single one of the 100,000-plus visitors to Antarctica this season returned home and became vegans, stopped driving, committed to a net-zero lifestyle. But if each of them devoted their lives to some form of change for good, this would have an impact. For example, if we as a human species stopped eating seafood, much of the Antarctic’s problems would resolve — the myriad threatened species in the Southern Ocean, from whales to penguins, could have access the food we humans are taking from them, giving them a better chance at survival.
Of course, not all visitors will have such reverence for the continent. The Atlantic notes that “many sightseers bring a whiff of ‘last-chance tourism’—a desire to see a place before it’s gone, even if that means helping hasten its disappearance.” And as this Guardian article points out, “in some areas tourists have traipsed over delicate mosses and plants. Some historic structures have even been scarred by graffiti.” And for many tourists, there seems to be far less interest in learning about the unique landscape, history, and wildlife in Antarctica than in doing things they can do just about anywhere else: climbing, camping, cross-country skiing, paddleboarding, snorkeling.
There is no official cap on the number of tourists who can visit Antarctica, and, as the Atlantic advocates, Antarctica “is actually most valuable to us when left wild, so that it can continue to act as a buffer against climate change, a storehouse of the world’s fresh water, and a refuge for birds, whales, seals, fish, and even the krill that the entire marine ecosystem depends on.”
As this article notes, “Antarctica doesn’t need ambassadors; it needs guardians.” While surely one of the best ways to protect Antarctica may be to leave it alone, at the same time, seeing a place firsthand may be the most powerful way to let it change your life and vow to protect what you were able to witness firsthand so that it will all be there for others to see in the future. As acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton says in this 2010 interview in The Sun magazine: “…the wildlife wouldn’t miss us if we didn’t visit. But the reality is that experiencing wilderness increases the chance that we will preserve it.”
Women at the end of the world have been getting more attention lately due mostly to publicized cases of sexual harassment and assault on research bases — and here’s hoping the focus on these women in science will soon shift to the amazing work they’re doing.
As this article points out, women’s work in Antarctica is recent — the continent was first sighted in 1820, and the women who arrived in the early 1900s were accompanying their husbands (check out the book Polar Wives to learn about the wives of famous Antarctic explorers, like Kathleen Scott and Emily Shackleton). It wasn’t until the middle of the century that women traveled to Antarctica to explore and research on their own. The continent was still primarily male dominated even when an all-women team worked there in 1969.
As Chilean biologist Dr Leyla Cárdenas, who’s been traveling to Antarctica for thirteen years, says in this article, work in Antarctica has long been “defined by gender roles.”
It’s inspiring to see more women engaged in polar studies, and perhaps now that efforts are being made to address sexism and harassment, more women will work and thrive in Antarctica, as they already are.
One of my favorite Antarctic stories, though fictional, celebrates women in an extraordinary way: Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “Sur” is about an expedition to the South Pole by a group of South American women — the first humans to reach the South Pole, and the only ones who know it.
When My Last Continent was first published (hardcover in 2016 and paperback in 2017), I found myself answering a lot of questions about Antarctic tourism. Is it ethical to visit this fragile place? What sorts of harm are travelers doing to the environment? Are visitors hurting the penguins’ chance at survival?
My answer, six and seven years ago, was that travel was the least of the penguins’ problems. These incredible birds are being profoundly affected by climate change and overfishing; the best way to help penguins, I used to say, is to stop eating seafood (especially krill) and to fight for climate protections and marine protected areas. Back then, the number of visitors to Antarctica was not enough to harm penguins directly — especially when considering the emotional impact a visit to this beautiful continent can have. I like to think that most people who see penguins in the wild will begin to devote at least part of their lives to protecting them, whether it’s making changes to prevent global warming or to eat less seafood, or none.
But things have changed quite a lot in the last few years. When I went to Antarctica in 2004, there were about 20,000 tourists a year visiting the continent. By the time My Last Continent was published, that number had doubled. Now, the 2022-23 season expects to see more than 100,000 tourists in Antarctica. That is mind-boggling — and seems to be a sign we’ve reached the tipping point at which Antarctic travel can no longer be sustainable.
There are many reasons why 100,000 waterproof boots on the continent are too many: pollution in the Southern Ocean, possible disruptions to penguins’ breeding cycles, the introduction of foreign objects and viruses — and this article highlights something many of us may not even think of — the effects of marine noise for the underwater animals in Antarctica:
Most of the thousands of scientists and support staff who sail to continental Antarctica every summer smash into the Southern Ocean on ice-cutting hulls. Their engines boom. Their machinery rumbles. Their propellers clatter and hiss from cavitating, collapsing bubbles.
The results of this noise “can cause immediate injury or even mortality” to such tiny animals as krill, which penguins and whales rely on for food. But underwater noise also causes stress to whales and other marine animals. The impacts of noise include “miscarriages; injury; disease; vulnerability to predation; changes in appetite; disrupted mother-calf bonds; panic; anxiety; and confusion.”
Of course, fishing boats also cause noise — and we need to limit their presence in the Southern Ocean as well — and scientific vessels are important and often necessary. But each of us can have an impact by considering why and how we travel. Given the animal lives at stake, is it really worth it?
Antarctica is among my favorite places on the planet, and I feel fortunate to have been able to travel there. But I would not make the same decision to travel to Antarctica as I did nearly twenty years ago. I’d like to see other humans discover the magic of this amazing continent — but the trouble is, the magic will be gone if we travel in numbers too great for the animals, and the environment, to handle.
