This is a multi-part series. See Part 1 from here.
Creating Antarctic Ambassadors
Only a tiny fraction of the world’s population will ever set foot on Antarctica, but preserving and protecting it is crucial to all of our survival – a fact lost on many. While it’s true that out of sight is often out of mind when it comes to action on climate change, it’s easy to see this argument as a convenient excuse for carrying on operating in an industry that’s worth over $800 million. How we can go about balancing access with mitigating impacts remains a question. What is certain, though, is that our fate and that of this continent are inextricably linked, and the more people who understand that, the better.
Since retiring from his faculty position in the department of physics at St. Olaf College in 2013, Jacobel joined National Geographic’s Lindblad Expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula and Svalbard as a lecturer, affording him a glimpse of the tourism industry after decades of working on the ice as a researcher.
Jacobel states, “Most people who can afford the cost of visiting Antarctica are keenly interested in learning everything they can about the continent. They do not all become environmental activists, but some do, and many will at least share their experiences, sense of awe, and the importance of preserving the environment. While I agree in principle that any human presence has some impact (I’ve seen 10,000-year-old cryptobiotic soil crust destroyed with one set of footprints), I don’t think that the mere presence of humans is ‘inherently threatening’ to an ecosystem.”
Scott Borg, Ph.D., worked as an Antarctic researcher for several decades. He retired in 2021 from the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he worked as program director of Polar Earth Sciences and Antarctic Geology and Geophysics and division director for Antarctic Sciences, among other roles.
Borg reflected, “The reason I’m supportive [of ecotourism] is that if there wasn’t a way for a wider population to get glimpses of the ice, then all the conservation and preservation of the environment would go unnoticed … It’s too bad it’s so costly – both in dollars and carbon footprint — to experience the polar regions – I think the world would be better off if more people could see and appreciate the various parts of our planet.”
After years of working on the ice at Palmer Station, Teets was optimistic about ecotourism’s footprint, “I do see some positives to ecotourism, primarily in helping tourists appreciate the intrinsic value of Antarctica and the value of supporting research there.”
McClintock added, “Guests who visit Antarctica absolutely become Antarctic ambassadors that raise public, corporate, and government awareness. Many are very well connected and do spawn actions related to climate change.”
Another favorable argument for tourism is funding, as it’s common for Antarctic tour operators to use revenue to fund scientific research. Viking Cruises, for example, uses its Antarctic ships to host labs and scientists. IAATO says such contributions are “fundamental to achieving research objectives in different fields of knowledge, going from the understanding of polar tourists’ behavior and learning to the evaluation of environmental changes in places threatened by global warming.” Such donations are, of course, not mandatory, however, despite many saying they should be.
When it comes to the real threat to Antarctica, though, the common consensus among the scientific community was best summed up by Jacobel when he said, “Though attention is warranted about the future, tourism would rank well down on a list of my concerns for Antarctica right now … Climate change and related impacts are the biggest threat to Antarctica.”
The Fragile Frontier
When people think of Antarctica and climate change, flooding usually comes to mind. While it’s true that melting a continent twice the size of Australia and 61 times the size of the UK would mean sea levels rising by 230 feet, it would also mean losing answers to countless questions – many of which science hasn’t yet known to ask.
As Teets said, “We can learn a lot about how other organisms function by studying species that push the limits of possibility … A good way to learn about human hearts is by studying highly trained athletes whose hearts work really well. Similarly, these extreme-adapted organisms can tell us a lot about life on the rest of the planet.”
Teets’s work focused on large-scale genomic investigations of Belgica Antarctica that allow science to identify molecular mechanisms essential for surviving extreme conditions and identifying Antarctic insects that can rapidly acclimate to changing temperatures and protect themselves from injury caused by freezing. He also led a project identifying what mechanisms allow these species to thrive in Antarctica’s inhospitable environment, lessons that would be crucial for all of us as climate change renders our own environments less hospitable. And the potential for revolutionary breakthroughs doesn’t stop there. McClintock co-led 15 research expeditions in Antarctica studying the chemical ecology of Antarctic marine seaweeds and marine invertebrates, revealing chemical defenses active against bacterial infections and even cancers.
Flooding is really just one of many devastating consequences of losing The White Continent.
“It’s not just about water contributing to sea level rise,” explains Ball, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Mathematical & Natural Sciences.
Like many studying the polar regions, Ball’s interest was born from a desire to understand organisms that push survival’s limits.
When it comes to Antarctica’s role in the health of our planet, she explained, “Ice is also highly reflective of incoming solar energy, and changes the earth’s albedo and energy balance, which can have long-term impacts on climate. Without the ice, the planet will absorb more energy.”
McClintock added, “Antarctica is the central engine of the great ocean conveyor belt. The deep Antarctic circumpolar current is warming, and it feeds currents that extend up into both the Pacific and Atlantic in the northern hemisphere. These currents push the elements of climate change – temperature, winds, etc.”
Bill Fraser, president and lead investigator of Polar Oceans Research Group, put it simply. Saying, “The way to look at Antarctica is that it’s the most important cooling system to the earth.”
The extent to which changes around the globe could impact Antarctica, and vice versa, were not understood at the time the laws governing activities in Antarctica were created, but now that we know better, the regulations haven’t adapted, much to the consternation of many.
“At the time the treaty was crafted, impacts were thought of as only those related to direct human intrusion on the continent or the surrounding seas … The global reach of climate change and volatile pollutants like DDTs or CFCs was not recognized when the treaty was framed, and thus activities at higher latitudes that did not ‘touch’ Antarctica directly were not considered,” observed James Hollibaugh, an oceanographer from the University of Georgia.
Discussions of climate change in as remote an ecosystem as Antarctica also illuminate gaps in our understanding of “climate” — it’s not simply the average of temperature or precipitation; rather, it’s a complex system of interactions involving the atmosphere, the oceans, the cryosphere, the land, and the biosphere.
As Jacobel explains, “The polar regions (both poles) play a key role in controlling these interactions. From the formation of deep cold water that drives ocean circulation, to changes in the earth’s reflectivity largely due to sea ice, to the large-scale motions of the atmosphere…our understanding of these systems and their interactions is still evolving, and we have much yet to learn. These understandings are a part of the ‘public good’ that can help us to better and more sustainably inhabit this planet. The polar regions play a key role in this understanding, and it is incumbent upon us as good stewards not to disturb and disrupt natural systems in these areas.”
While the changes caused by climate change are global, their impacts are not equally felt globally. Antarctica is a fragile region of tipping points, meaning temperature changes have catastrophic consequences. As Ball explains, “A degree of warming isn’t noticeable to the average person in Phoenix, Arizona…But a degree of warming in Antarctica can be the difference between frozen and thawed.”
That the fate of this vast wilderness has implications on the whole planet and hangs in a fragile balanceonly heightens the burden of inaction on governing bodies.
“We know there are tipping points in the collection of physical processes that control ice sheet behavior…but we don’t have enough long-term data sets to use in the models to get predictions with very low uncertainty. This stuff is not observable in short visits – it takes many years of observations,” said Borg.
But does the Antarctic have that kind of time? According to most, the answer is no.
Surviving The Melt
Despite popular assumptions, there are no polar bears in Antarctica. And yet, we’ve all seen the photos of a lonely polar bear on a shrinking iceberg as part of some climate action call. This has become a cliché for good reason, the plight of wildlife eliciting a visceral reaction that information about landscapes often lacks. When it comes to Antarctica though, it comes down to one particular species that certainly doesn’t look as cute as polar bears, but without whom the ecosystem would collapse: krill.
As the primary food source for Antarctic whales, seals, and penguins, krill are foundational to both the food chain and the environment as they remove carbon dioxide by eating carbon-rich algae. Without the krill, animals who feed on them would cease to exist.
Borg explained, “We know that the trends in sea ice cover in the peninsula affect specific penguin populations…so we see population shifts of penguins following the environment that they need to survive. There is a similar effect happening to the distribution of krill.”
And climate change isn’t the only thing working against krill. Many researchers we spoke to actually ranked overfishing as equally catastrophic to climate change for Antarctica, mainly because of the impact on krill.
Julia Wellner, a professor at the University of Houston in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, believes Antarctica’s biggest threat is overfishing, saying, “The global fishing fleet is moving farther and farther south. In a restaurant, if you order chili and sea bass, that’s actually the Antarctic toothfish, which is now being fished directly in Antarctic waters and at massive scales.”
Dr. Steven Emslie, a professor at the UNC Wilmington in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology echoed this, adding, “So far, the krill fishery has been at a sustainable level, but it keeps increasing, and now, with sea ice declining and whales recovering that eat krill, it’s going to put more pressures on that.”
It’s estimated that krill populations in the Southern Ocean have decreased 80% over the last few decades. And while there have been attempts to support their populations through regulation, according to Fraser, we need more. “It’s very easy to bypass those regulations… You can see that the krill fisheries are raiding the refrigerator. That’s where the food is,” Emslie explained.
Despite being a cornerstone of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean food chains, krill remains an unprotected species, meaning millions are still fished for use in products like aquarium food and bait. As the only continent without an indigenous population, Antarctica is often envisioned to be an endless mass of deserted ice and snow.
But in truth, “Antarctica is teaming with life,” Teets explained.
“While the growing season is short, Antarctica is home to a number of plants and animals that are dependent on Antarctica, from nesting penguins and seals, migratory birds, whales, to insects which can only be found in Antarctica and nowhere else. In addition to the intrinsic value of these species, they are important contributors to global nutrient cycling,” he said.
Faced with a shrinking habitat, terrestrial animals can adapt to the new climate, shift their geographic range, or go extinct. Unfortunately for Antarctica’s inhabitants, the first two options are difficult, if not impossible. As Ball said, “If they lose their habitat, we are losing organisms.” As both their homes and primary food sources decrease, it’s no surprise that Antarctic populations are doing the same.
“Glaciers are rapidly retreating, ice shelves are breaking out removing barriers to the seaward flow of ice sheets, and annual sea ice which used to double the size of Antarctica is much reduced. Sea ice-dependent species, including krill and Adelie penguins are suffering,” said McClintock.
Adelie penguins, the most vulnerable of the penguin species, have decreased 43% or more in some regions. Tourism companies say they avoid wildlife areas unless the wildlife has been shown to coexist happily with humans, but the pandemic may have disproven this notion.
Roura explained, “There was a very interesting example during the pandemic: Commercial tourism in Antarctica dropped to zero during the 2020-2021 season, from a record level the previous season, but some researchers who managed to go on a sailing vessel were able to document penguins taking over a breeding site that had been “annexed” over the years by tourism activities. It had been assumed until then that penguins bred happily among tourists, but it appears that they retook the space in greater numbers once it became available again… At a minimum this highlights that humans and wildlife do not coexist as unconnected separate realities as sometimes it is believed.”
Ally Kristan, a researcher at Duke University lamented, “”I wish people understood what a deeply special and peaceful place Antarctica is, and felt compelled to leave it as such. There are seals that can see in near complete darkness underwater in the Antarctic winter, and then in the summer they gnaw holes in the sea ice with their teeth, catapult themselves out onto the ice and give birth in the frigid Antarctic sun, penguins who don’t stop moving for days and days at a time to feed their young, who huddle together in the most brutal cold with an egg on their feet just trying to survive, fish with antifreeze in their blood. And I don’t think any of them stop to think, ‘wow, life is hard’- they simply exist, peacefully, naturally.”
Clearly, we could all stand to learn a lot not only from this pristine wilderness, but also from its inhabitants. But those lessons can only be learned if it is still there to teach us.
Saving Our Last Great Wilderness
The answer of “climate change” instead of “tourism” in response to the question of Antarctica’s biggest threats doesn’t take Antarctic governance parties off the hook, quite the opposite, as Christian explains.
“Warming temperatures and rising emissions have the potential to dramatically transform the Antarctic environment, and in many cases are already doing so. But the existence of climate change is ultimately a failure of governance, and in particular international global governance institutions that acknowledge it as a threat, but are unable to implement any meaningful policy responses. Unfortunately, this is true at the Antarctic level as well. The ATCM and CCAMLR have been unable to reach consensus on a wide variety of conservation proposals, including those that would help protect the region from human impacts,” she added.
So, where can we go from here? Currently, the ATCM does not have a plan in place to get the information needed to truly understand the impact of tourism, let alone disentangle its effects from climate change. According to Christian and others, this is the first of many things that need to change.
Saying, “This plan should also include studies of areas where tourism does not occur. One problem we have in the Antarctic Peninsula is that there are a lot of human-caused impacts – fishing, tourism, base operations, climate change – and we can’t easily disentangle them. But that does not mean that tourism itself does not have its own signature on the environment or that this signature is always negligible. Doing more studies comparing various aspects of visited areas to unvisited areas (using the unvisited areas as a control) would give us valuable information about how Antarctic ecosystems respond to various impacts.”
In the absence of long-term ecological monitoring programs within the Antarctic peninsula in particular, as the continent’s hub for terrestrial biodiversity and tourism, many of the predictions that scientists rely on now come from short-term field studies or lab studies, where they simulate environments and measure impacts. Such studies, coupled with remote sensing, the use of satellites, and underwater drones, may not feel as concrete as fieldwork, but maybe the future of Antarctic research as a way to understand this wilderness without leaving a footprint.
As Teets explains, “Conducting research in Antarctica is monetarily and energetically expensive, so tools that reduce carbon footprint are essential. I envision a future where countries conducting activities in Antarctica are committed to using renewable energy and carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of these activities. Many research stations have outdated infrastructure that makes them much less efficient than they could be.”
The call for increased political, economic, and social activism – both collectively and on an individual basis – came through all the expert feedback we received. “Our leaders need to be taking bold and ambitious decisions to rapidly reduce emissions,” said Christian.
She also added, “I also don’t think people should discount individual activism…We need to transform our way of life so that we can have less of an impact on our planet, and this should be a top-down and bottom-up transformation. Imagine what we could do if everyone felt compelled to do everything in their power to help the planet.”
The ASOC knows more about the potential power of individual action than most. The organization began focusing on Antarctica in the 1970s, when activists became aware of discussions to allow mining in Antarctica, an initiative that needed the signature of all Antarctic Treaty Parties to proceed, which at the time, looked likely. The ASOC rallied opposition, and eventually the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection was signed, banning mining indefinitely. The ASOC’s involvement became a testament to the power of collective action, and a symbol of the role civil society might play in Antarctic governance.
As Christian explains, “We believe Antarctica belongs to everyone, so it’s important for civil society to ensure that the voice of the public is represented where decisions are made.”
When looked at from this standpoint, it begs the question if seeing the white continent in person can indeed be the spark for change that some say.
“Knowledge is power,” said Robert Jacobel simply. “Anything that encourages the collection and dissemination of knowledge about the poles is important,” he added. Could Antarctic expeditions be that thing? There’s a strong argument for yes, but it’s a tough call, especially given contradictory arguments when it comes to how best to help Antarctica from afar. For instance, if we’re taking Hollibaugh’s advice (“lower your carbon footprint”), getting on an Antarctic cruise is the last thing you should do.
While individual mandates for action from expert to expert, no one was divided on what actions were needed from the top.
“Big bold fast decisions need to be taken by those who currently have the power to take them, now. With respect to Antarctic tourism, it is all well for tourists to behave as best as they can, and for the tourism industry to inform and facilitate that behavior. But in the end, regulation of tourism so that it is ecologically sustainable requires that Antarctic Treaty states provide guidance and prioritize the Antarctic environment and ecosystems, ahead of industry interests,” said Roura.
Whether the pressure comes from the top, bottom, or both, the need to update the IAATO’s regulations is clear. It’s also clear that any changes will be ineffective without collaboration by every stakeholder within the Antarctic tourism industry.
Towards a Sustainable Horizon
Tour operators hope to create an army of Antarctic advocates by offering travelers unique journeys in Antarctica. But are they? And who are they advocating for?
As Roura pointed out, “A stakeholder here that it is not always considered is Antarctica itself — its biodiversity seen not as an abstract entity and the subject of treaties, but as a living thing with its own reality. We need to find better ways to interact and coexist with it.” And of course, no discussion about climate action or lack thereof would be complete without considering politics. When asked about government action for good, experts’ answers were shrouded in a palpably ominous cloud, given the recent changes in North American politics.
Jacobel said glibly, “I am not aware of any NSF funding to specifically monitor the impacts of tourism… This would probably be a good idea, but can you imagine what would happen in a congressional budget committee hearing if this subject was brought up, given the changes in administration we are about to experience.”
As the fate of this precious, fragile wilderness hangs in the balance, it seems to fall more and more to the Antarctic ecotourism industry, and those fortunate enough to take part in it, to not just understand, but also convey, that our fate does too.
