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This coming tourists season, Antarctica will be welcoming about 11,200 tourists and all of them except for 130 travelers, coming in via cruise liners, proof enough that this continent’s harsh conditions such as isolation, snow, ice, high winds and raging seas are not enough to ward off the tourists. With a growth of 400 compared to last year’s tourists proving to not be very impressive with the tourist season that runs from the middle of November up to February, the fact is that this is actually a 70 percent jump compared to the 6,585 tourist seasons that came before it. The environment of Antarctica is a cause of concern for many watchers who predict that a thousand more Antarctic voyagers will keep coming in year by year.

The cost of Antarctic cruises can easily reach $20,000 a person, and the average 14-day cruise is a still hefty $6,000 to $7,000, plus, roundtrip air fare to Ushuaia, Argentina in Tierra del Fuego from which 90 percent of the trips depart. Underneath the idea that Antarctica appears to be indefatigable despite the growing number of tourists, with the cost of going there even the harsh climate and geography, people still pose threats to the ecosystem, as stated by many environmental experts. If you need more details on Papua New Guinea Tourism visit there.

The director of the Antarctic Project said that people should have an opportunity to see Antarctica’s beauty, but there should be a cap on the number of visitors and a ban on any new sites. It is a fact that this secretariat, which is a Washington based project involves more than 40 different countries and 200 different environmental advocate groups.It’s true that once people visit Antarctica they come back committed to its conservation, but the downside is that there are so many visitors and Antarctica is so fragile, that there’s a danger they’re loving it to death.

This director’s nagging concern is the many tourists venturing to the same places on the 800 mile long Antarctic Peninsula, boasting of the most formidable concentration of penguins, seals and birds so he is proposing for a limit of visitors per year amounting to six thousand. Even as tour groups arriving there do not even exceed a hundred at one occasion. This impacts the animals adversely as they cannot get to rest in between visits and they also cannot sustain food for themselves not even for themselves.

But when it comes to a long term effect, not even science can answer that, she notes. Tourists that senselessly tinker with plants and do not dispose their garbage well are among the White Continent’s growing concerns when it comes to the environment of Antarctica.With the proper reinforcement of the Treaty of Antarctica, we know understand the reason why many experienced staff see to it that travelers going ashore do not make much or any impact, and also this sheds light as to why most tour operators strictly operate with these guidelines and rules. The Antarctic Treaty supported by 43 different nations and signed in the year 1959 as well as the January 14, 1998 environmental protocol reinforced protective measures for the environment like stopping mining and oil drilling, along with limiting fishing events and cruises around the frozen continent. You may be looking for Sepik River information, in which case you should visit that site.

The members of the tour association based in New York City have agreed to abide by the 100 person promulgation applicable to shore visits, where zodiacs, small motorized rubber boats are utilized.Russian flags are being flown, this season, by nine air crafts out of the fifteen commissioned. Tour operators smiled during the break up of the Soviet Union as a motley of smaller ships became accessible for them. A ship that is called an icebreaker, along with several other ships with hardened hulls to face tough ice can accommodate 40 to 80 individuals. Now, we see how obvious the problems of Antarctica keeps concerning more and more parties.We can only wait for the day in the future when, looking back, we would be so relieved that our worries were in vain. But as we wait for science to bring forth the answer, it is best to take it upon ourselves and restrain our trips to the Frozen Continent.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Cruise Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.