In Antarctica, tour operators police themselves

As a vast expanse belonging to no one nation, Antarctica has unique rules of governance that allow tour operators -- one of the few commercial activities permitted -- to largely police themselves.

The Antarctica Treaty was signed 60 years ago by 12 countries -- it now has 54 signatories -- including the United States and Russia, a notable feat during the Cold War.

It declares the continent is dedicated to science and peace, and freezes any territorial claims.

Other agreements have since been added to the treaty, including the 1991 Madrid Protocol on environmental protection.

Declaring Antarctica a "nature reserve" where the mining of mineral resources is banned, the Protocol says human activities may only be undertaken after environmental impact studies.

The text bans the voluntary introduction of plant and animal species, and the discharge into the sea of oil and gas, waste and untreated water.

It requires visitors to take their rubbish away with them when they leave.

As such, it provides a general framework for tourism.

In the same year, the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) was founded by seven tour operators to agree on ship scheduling, safety and environmental protection.

It now groups almost all tour operators in the region and is invited to the Antarctic Treaty signatories' annual meetings to discuss developments in tourism and propose new regulations.

Under existing rules, only ships carrying fewer than 500 passengers are allowed to make landings at approved sites and only 100 people allowed ashore at a time.

Visitors must clean their personal effects before going ashore, be accompanied by guides with a ratio of 1:20, must not bring food, leave anything behind or take anything back.

This year, IAATO's 100 or so member companies and organisations voted in favour of measures aimed at preventing ship collisions with whales, and for additional restrictions on the use of drones.

Antarctica, 'heart of the Earth' needs protection: expert
Punta Arenas, Chile (AFP) Nov 29, 2019 - It may be remote and uninhabited but Antarctica is suffering from man's activities, says the director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute, Marcelo Leppe, in an interview with AFP.

- Why is Antarctica important? -

Originally in school we were taught that there were only five continents around the world. Antarctica is the sixth continent, but it's a continent that you can define as the heart of Earth.

The world's main marine current is the circumpolar Antarctic current that moves from west to east around Antarctica. It appeared 13 million years ago and it has frozen a continent that was green in the past. This current has connections with the thermohaline (ocean) currents around the world.

It's like a heart because every year it changes its shape from 14 million square kilometres to more than 20 million. It expands in winter with the sea ice and retreats in summer ... You can see it beating, really beating.

And the subantarctic current is moving around the world like a circulatory system. It's probably playing a major role in the control of climate change.

So it (the current) is very important to understand and to predict, but it's also very important to preserve.

- What is the impact of climate change on Antarctica? -

The main impact in Antarctica is probably the cryosphere. Every year you can observe and record the melting of glaciers, the disappearance of sea ice ... and, in areas that are left without ice, the recolonisation of plants and other organisms that were not present in Antarctica before.

We have recorded that in the last 50 years, probably 15 percent of all the ice has disappeared. And in the coming years this curve will accelerate, more than originally expected in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predictions.

In 2100, probably an important share, more than 35 percent of the ice will have disappeared. The landscape of the Antarctic peninsula will be different and the dynamics of the sea currents will also definitely be different.

- Are there any other threats? Why should we be concerned? -

Antarctica is not as isolated as we think. Microplastics are starting to be a big, big issue in Antarctica. They are everywhere and ... we have detected them in all environments. We have detected them in the eggs of penguins, for example.

So what we produce in the rest of the world is reaching Antarctica and this nature that looks very untouched is actually impacted by humanLeppe beings through microplastics.

When you have a continent that is regulating the weather, the climate around the world, with these teleconnections (related to each other at great distances), of course you have to pay attention.

Five things to know about wildlife in Antarctica
Half Moon Island, Antarctica (AFP) Nov 29, 2019 - Antarctica is largely inhospitable to land animals -- 99 percent of the continent is covered in snow and ice.

With the exception of man -- a non-native species -- the biggest terrestrial animal is a six millimetre flightless midge, Belgica Antarctica.

However marine life is rich and varied, with the broadest diversity on Earth after coral reefs.

Here are five things to know about Antarctica's fauna:

- Faster than Phelps -

Penguins are perhaps Antarctica's most emblematic animals.

There are four species native to the region, who reside there all year long: Adelie, emperor, chinstrap and gentoo penguins.

Gentoo penguins are swift in water. They can reach speeds of 35 kilometres per hour (22 miles per hour), almost four times faster than US Olympic champion Michael Phelps, the fastest swimmer in the world at 9.6 km/h.

The number of gentoo penguin on the Antarctic Peninsula appears to be rising, while Adelie numbers are declining. Scientists say the difference is in their diets: the former eats krill, squid and fish, while the latter depends exclusively on krill.

Penguins themselves are a delicacy -- leopard seals can devour up to 20 a day.

- Winged rubbish bin -

Despite its pristine whiteness, the snowy sheathbill, a plump migratory bird, is scrappy scavenger not picky about what it eats.

They are the continent's rubbish bins, according to experts.

"They go around scavenging everything," explains ornithologist Rebecca Hodgkiss.

"They'll eat guano -- penguin poop -- they'll eat any fish or anything that the penguins drop, they'll eat anything dead that they find," she says.

- The krilling fields -

In Antarctica, the food chain is generally pretty short.

Wildlife relies largely on krill, probably the most abundant biomass on the planet, according to the French Polar Institute.

Even the biggest mammal in the world, the blue whale, which can weigh more than 150 tonnes, feeds on these tiny shrimp, which in turn feed on phytoplankton.

"No whales without phytoplankton," says American biologist Allison Cusick, who is writing her PhD thesis on these microscopic marine algae.

The inverse is also true. Rich in iron, whale excrement fertilises the phytoplankton.

"There's this whole loop that cycles through where phytoplankton need iron, phytoplankton grow, feed krill, krill feed whales, whales poop and feed phytoplankton," Cusick says.

And the quantities are enormous. A blue whale, one of eight whale species in Antarctica, eats up to 3.6 tonnes of krill per day.

- No dogs allowed -

While dogs were essential in helping Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen become the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911 -- first by pulling his sleds and then ending up in his belly -- dogs are no longer welcome on the continent.

The Madrid Protocol on environmental protection in Antarctica, signed in 1991, bans the introduction of non-native plant and animal species.

The text called for all dogs to leave the region by 1994.

When the British Antarctic Survey's sled dogs were brought to the Falklands for several weeks to adapt to the climate before returning to Britain, they discovered grass, sheep and children for the first time.

- Humans: the real problem -

Despite efforts to avoid it, invasive species introduced by man can pose problems for local species.

Peter Convey, a British expert on Antarctic ecology, can name about a hundred invasive species over two centuries, introduced primarily by scientists and tourists.

"The bottom line is that humans bring in 99 percent" of invasive species, Convey says.

In most cases these are plants, but they can also be micro-organisms or insects.

During a transfer of plants in the 1960s, humans introduced a midge on Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands, where its rapid proliferation could threaten the fragile ecosystem if it migrates further south to the continent.

Human activities "are, in reality, likely to have far greater immediate impacts on Antarctic ecosystems than climate change per se," Convey and his colleague from the British Antarctic Survey, Lloyd Peck, wrote in a study published this week Science Advances.

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