Scientists worried thrill-seekers will upset Antarctica's fragile ecosystem

By Jamie Tarabay
The Associated Press

	OBED ZILWA / AP, 2000 Ann Bancroft of Scania, Minn., left, and her partner Liv Arnesen of Norway test their sled on Antarctic ice. For researchers, Antarctica is treasure trove; for tourists, the icy continent is a cool place to visit.
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Increasingly, the two are colliding.

More than 13,000 tourists arrived on the Antarctic peninsula near Chile during the past summer season, raising fears for its fragile ecosystem.

"We want them to understand there are very strict rules," said Sharman Stone of the Australian Antarctic Division.

The rules laid down by the United States and six other nations that have research bases on Antarctica govern everything from wildlife protection to the foods that tourists can bring ashore.

They apply especially to unsupervised "extreme" adventurers for whom few frontiers are as distant as Antarctica's pristine landscape of infinite white, where the air can get colder than the most powerful industrial freezer.

The rules were highlighted in December when Australian aviator Jon Johanson was castigated for poorly preparing his solo flight over the South Pole. Johanson flew over the pole in his homemade plane but didn't have enough fuel to make it back to New Zealand.

Instead he landed without permission at the airfield at the U.S. McMurdo Station. He was stranded on an icy runway near the edge of Antarctica because the U.S. and New Zealand bases refused to sell him fuel.

Instead, Johanson was told he would have to dismantle his plane and take a commercial flight home at his own expense. Steadfastly refusing to leave his aircraft, he spent six cold nights in the plane before receiving fuel from a British pilot whose expedition was aborted by bad weather.

"He was advised that what he was attempting was unwise ... he still took the journey, he took it without official people knowing," Stone said.

She denied a "no-help policy" was in force but said adventurers have to foot the bill for their rescue. Johanson insisted he had taken the safest options.
 
The swelling ranks of tourists have sent authorities scrambling to their policy books to tighten controls. But they cannot police the continent's borders, nor is there a visa system that could regulate numbers.

Stone worries that tourism may set back Antarctica's recovery from the damage inflicted in the past.

"It would be a real tragedy if tourists unwittingly introduced diseases onto the continent, like the flu, and approaching wildlife and causing declines in species that are only just rebuilding after wholesale hunting for fur and oil" from the 1880s to the 1960s, she said.

But David Bowen of Toronto-based GAP Adventures says tourism is unstoppable.

"People are going to travel to Antarctica, there's no doubt about it," he said.

"We have two choices: We can put our heads in the sand and forget about it because it could damage the place, or we can go there and do the best we can at preserving it."

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