Images to Display the Main Points So Far

By reading the human impacts on Antarctica, it can be difficult to picture what’s actually going on. In my blog, I have tried to make the posts as visual as I can, because this illustrates the extent of the issues I have discussed. Particularly because Antarctica is remote and relatively uninhabited, I have used maps to show where the places I talk about are.

Having said this, I feel like illustrations need their own post so today, I will be presenting a range of photographs that relate to the main issues I have mentioned so far: tourism, waste, entanglement and krill.

Figure 1.

Clean up operation of an abandoned landfill site at Thala Valley. The site was used from the 1960s to 1980s. An Australian research station dumped approximately 1,000 tonnes of soil here, which contains remains of used batteries and machinery. Source: Royal Society of Chemistry (2007)

Figure 2.

Freshly caught krill. Source: Australian government: Department of the Environment, Antarctic Division (2012)

Figure 3.

Researcher carefully taking a sample from a contaminated site. Source: Australian government: Department of the Environment, Antarctic Division (2012)

Figure 4.

Tourists enjoying the company of an Emperor penguin chick. Source: Wikipedia (2009)

Figure 5

Runner from the Antarctic Marathon smiling at a penguin. Source: B Positive Project (2013)

Figure 6.

Source: Peabody Essex Museum (2008)

Figure 7.

Diver among krill. Source: Sarano and Duran (2010) ‘Oceans:Official Companion to the Disney Feature Film’

Figure 8.

350 foreign officials attend an Annual Antarctic Treaty Conference in Uruguay in 2010. Main discussions included tourism, climate change and sovereignty. Source: Merco Press (2010)

Before I end this post, I'd like to recommend a couple of blogs and websites that have a good selection of photos that I would encourage my readers to take a look at. Firstly, Flickr's Antarctica page has a great range of pictures taken by tourist, and can be accessed by clicking here. Secondly, I came across a website called Wild Nature Images which has many photographs posted on their website, and can be accessed by clicking here. 

Pause for Thought

Since I started this blog three months ago, I have covered a wide range of topics. Given this and the enormity of this subject, I thought that this post should summarise the main findings so far.

Here is a summary of the key points and conclusions:

• Different parts of Antarctica are being affected differently. It is easy to consider Antarctica as one unified system which is affected the same when things happen because the whole continent looks homogeneous. For example, “Larsen B has collapsed, quick! We have to find a way to stop the whole continent from melting!” In reality, ice sheets in Antarctica are complex to understand because they are affected by climate change, ocean circulations…etc. The Bipolar Sea-saw Pattern can help explain one part of the observed sea ice changes, however it is only a contributing factor out of many.
• Tourism is a recent phenomenon and as tourist numbers continue to increase, and they will do in the future, animals are being affected in different ways. But the extent that they are affected differs between species. Tourism also has indirect impacts which are just as damaging to the environment, for example oil spills.
• International organisations such as the UN try to create treaties to regulate Antarctica. I have analysed regulation in terms of tourism and found that there are flaws in them. In my view tougher restrictions are required if the environment is to remain unaltered by human actions. Furthermore, regulation can have negative and positive impacts on animals in Antarctica, for example, whaling bans, krill and penguins. It is unlikely that international organisations foresee these indirect food chain effects and this reduces the impact of regulation.
• Krill are immensely important in the Antarctic food chain but fishing activities may be jeopardising them. However, it is difficult to understand whether krill populations are reacting to fishing or natural changes in sea ice extent caused by La Niña. Because of this, separating natural impacts and human impacts is more complex than it seems. 
• Fishing is harmful for fur seals and other mammals because debris lost in the ocean creates entanglement.
• Regulation seems to be the only way that humans are trying to make amends. It seems that banning happens less often.

My Thoughts

Furthermore, I would like to use this as an opportunity to evaluate what I have posted so far, giving my thoughts on what I think I have done well and not so well.

• Diversity: I have tried to include a range of case studies throughout the blog to make it more interesting, drawing on different animals and explaining the different effects where ever I can. For instance, my discussions have drawn on fur seals, Adélie penguins, Gentoo penguins, krill, South Polar Skua…etc. I also want to point out that it has been an enjoyable experience learning about these wonderful animals!
• Geographical dispersion: I have tried to include case studies from different parts of Antarctica to illustrate what’s happening everywhere. This has been supplemented with maps (see below). Antarctica is a large continent and different regions are affected by different activities. Having said this, I believe I have focussed on west side of Antarctica more than the east side. While writing and researching, I have discovered that there is little literature on the east side of Antarctica which is the main reason why. Perhaps this is because eastern Antarctica is less accessible than the west side so research tends to be focussed here.
• Maps: I understand that naming Antarctic islands, ice sheets and seas could be confusing and hold little meaning if no one knows where they are. So where I can, I have places maps throughout the blog and highlighted where my case study locations are. Hopefully I haven’t created an overload, but I feel they are necessary!
• Balance: I have given a balanced view of the impacts throughout the blog, presenting arguments for natural causes as well as human impacts.

Is it S.O.S Antarctica?

The name of my blog suggests that, because of the human impacts, Antarctica is sending a distress signal, asking humans to leave it alone! So far, I have been counting the negative and postive/ natural impacts and they currently stand at 5-3 to negative impacts. Perhaps the continent is in trouble... In my last post I will attempt to answer the above question based on my previous posts and the total score.

Finally I wish to explain what the next few topics are. In this final month or so, I aim to discuss:

• The impact of research stations on Antarctica. Yes research has discovered ways to correct human impacts, but are there any negative impacts?

• The Ozone layer. So far I have focussed on terrestrial and marine impacts, but what about the atmospheric impact?

Thank you for reading, until next week, I’ll end with this cartoon to prepare for the next post. 

 Figure 1. The impact of research

Regulation Regulation Regulation

Is Montreal enough?

Are the Montreal Protocol and the general principles highlighted in Box 1 (from my post on Friday 14 November 2014) enough to remedy the potential negative wildlife impacts from tourism? This post is a discussion post where I will pick out and critically analyse some issues that I feel should be addressed going forward from the Montreal Protocol. You may also be pleased to know that this will be my final post about tourism!

The treaty has been criticised because there is no enforcement mechanism and because the tourism principles are non-binding (Lamers et al. 2012). There needs to be an enforcement mechanism otherwise governments will not take the principles seriously because they have nothing to lose if wildlife is negatively affected in Antarctica. Also, tourist companies need incentives to act to protect Antarctica. Without incentives created by governments, companies will feel relaxed about the limits because the short term gains are large and so they too lose nothing by disobeying the principles. Legally binding agreements and enforcement mechanisms are likely to make the Protocol more effective to help keep Antarctica in ecological equilibrium with minimal wildlife impact.

On a national scale, Argentina will lose out on tax revenues if business activities are restricted and Argentine tourist companies’ profits will fall. Tour companies that have to introduce mechanisms to reduce long-term degradation will incur costs, and revenues could fall if such mechanisms also add restrictions on tourist numbers. Because of this, profits will fall and so government tax revenues will also fall. The growth rate of the Argentine economy is currently 0.9% and over the past 20 years, the average growth rate has been only 0.84% (Trading Economics, 2014). These figures show that the Argentine government can greatly value the additional income that tourist companies generate for the country. Therefore if there is no enforcement mechanism, the government may be unwilling to act to ensure that the principles are met since this costs the economy. As can be seen, there is a strong economic element involved in regulating the Antarctic. In my opinion there should be an enforcement mechanism to encourage greater action to meet the goals the environmental standards proposed in Box 1 from my post on Friday 14 November 2014.

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA)

Annex One makes it a legal requirement for tour companies to conduct an EIA. The document must describe the scale of tourism and the impacts that these tourists are expected to have. Furthermore, tour companies must outline how they are going to limit these impacts. There is a wide range of literature on whether EIAs actually improve conservation efforts. If risks have been identified and the company has included methods to mitigate against them, this does not necessarily mean that the environment is healthier than it was before the intervention. In other words, the environment will be healthier without tourism and human interference altogether because a set of mitigation rules mean reducing the impact, not necessarily avoiding it. This is my general critique of EIAs.

Secondly, Lyons (1993) argues that the language used in the Annex means that the “appropriate” level of assessment is open to interpretation. Annex One includes phrases such as “a minor or transitory impact”, “detrimental changes” and “significant changes”, which are vague and therefore each tour company and government are free to choose their own definitions of these phrases. This also makes it easier for them to make an excuse about why tourism activities have higher environmental impacts than the Protocol set. For example, a tour company can simply point out to the countries in the Antarctic Treaty that their definition of detrimental is more extreme and in their view, introducing one or two invasive species is not classified as “detrimental”. The vague wording therefore reduces the effectiveness of the Protocol.

Also, because of vague description of standards, Kriwoken and Rootes (2000) mention that it’s difficult to determine what should and shouldn't be measured as an impact of tourism. What this means is that there needs to be quantitative standards that allow tour operators to measure and monitor the exact impacts so they can better understand how they can adhere to the regulatory standards.

Sum up

The treaty doesn't signal to me that Antarctica is in safe hands. The lack of clarity in the wording of the actual treaty has to be addressed. Despite Bauer’s view that the Protocol is a barrier to future tourism development (1994), I feel that they are not strong enough because they have no binding or enforcing mechanism. This means that the environmental and wildlife problems arising from tourism will persist and we need more regulation regulation regulation.

Next time I move on to the effects that humans have had on Antarctic krill.

Antarctic Treaty

According Garrett Hardin (1968), each herdsman wants to keep as many cattle as possible. The rational herdsman decides that adding additional animal to his herd will increase his utility. But each herdsman shares the commons, so if each herdsman decides to keep increasing cattle to the commons, the end result will be the depletion and ruin of the commons.

The commons here can be compared to Antarctica. Antarctica is an unregulated area of land which yields benefits to tourist companies who want to keep increasing tourist numbers as each additional tourist yields these companies higher utility (i.e. higher profits). The main assumption that Hardin uses is that the commons is unregulated. In this globalised world, it is rare, in my view, to find an industry that is unregulated – especially when it comes to nature and the environment. What matters in this debate though, is not whether there are regulations but how effective the regulations are.

One solution to the negative impacts explained last week is to reduce tourist numbers. This could potentially reduce the introduction of invasive species and the impact on penguin habitats. But as is obvious in my post from 27 October, tourist numbers are rising and I think this solution is unlikely. Companies running expeditions such as Poseidon Expeditions, Quark Expeditions, Chimu Adventures are profit maximising companies. This means they want to make as much money as possible and so reducing passenger numbers is undesirable because this reduces revenues and profits. Nevertheless, the Antarctic Treaty endeavours to do just this. In recognition of greater human visits to Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty has been set up to prevent an environmental catastrophe.

The Antarctic Treaty

It was formed in 1959 and came into force in 1961 to govern human activities. It comprises of 46 countries, of which 28 have advisory status (i.e. power to make decisions). The treaty believes that the following provisions are the most important (Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, n/d):

1. Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only (Art. I).

2. Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation (Art. II).

3. Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available (Art. III).

It claims these are the most important, however on reading these, my first impression is that there is no mention of the environmental concerns. Research seems to be the main agenda. As you will read later in my blog, research centres can also have negative impacts on the continent. So this is one flaw that I spotted when I began researching the treaty.   

The Rules of the Treaty are known as the Antarctic Treaty System, consisting of three international agreements:

1. Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (1972)

Aims to reduce commercial exploitation of seals.

2. Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1980)

Aims to conserve and manage marine living resources in Antarctic. The following measures, among others, are being taken (Fabra and Gascon, 2008):

a. Develop a management regime for krill that takes into account the impact of fishing on dependent species

b. Establish a monitoring program

c. Develop fisheries management policies

3. Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol (1991)

Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol

The relevant agreement that relates to tourism is number 3: Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This protocol was established in 1991 once it was recognised that the number of tourists were increasing. This treaty is broken up into six annexes including:

1. The requirement of an environmental impact assessment/initial environmental evaluation for every activity before it’s due to start 

2. Rules concerning the conservation of fauna and flora 

3. Rules on waste disposal and waste management 

4. Rules on marine pollution 

5. The establishment of protected areas 

6. Preventative measures and contingency plans shouldoperate in case of an environmental disaster. 

(Accessed through: Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, 2011)

Of the Annexes, number three and number six mention tourism. There were previously no restrictions or regulations on tourism, but this changed in 2009 when an agreement was made among member countries to limit tourism by reducing the size of cruise ships, capping the number of passengers that land in Antarctica to 500 and capping passengers on the shore at any given time to 100 (BBC, 2009). This agreement was discussed in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore. Box 1 displays the general principles that came out of these discussions.

Box 1: General principles of Antarctic tourism agreed in 2009
Source: Lamers et al. (2012)

So hopefully from this post I have illustrates that action is indeed being taken to help reduce the human impacts on Antarctica. The international community is not ignoring what is happening to wildlife in Antarctica and it’s important to acknowledge this. International treaties help regulate and reduce negative environmental issues. In particular, Annex 3 which relates to waste management is a useful starting point to improve the environment. 

This is where I’m going to end today. Because regulation aims to reduce the human impact, this is one point to positive impacts, so the updated score for negative impacts vs natural/positive impacts is 3-2. These treaties signify that we acknowledge and want to reduce our wrong doings. But are these really effective? Keep a look out for the next post where I will determine whether its one more point to negative impacts or not.

Holidaying in Antarctica II

This post is about even more impacts that tourism has had on the Antarctic environment.

Oil Spills

Oil spills that have occurred in Antarctica have never been of the same magnitude as oil spills that occur from oil pipe leakages such as the BP oil spill in 2010, where 210 million gallons of crude oil was spilt (The Telegraph, 2011), or the Little Buffalo oil spill in Canada that occurred in 2011, spilling more than 800,000 gallons (Yahoo News, 2014). Nevertheless, this does not mean that they don’t have severe consequences when they occur. If anything, oil spills have an even worse effect because marine life here is much less adaptable and rarer. 

When ships travel down to Antarctica they sometimes have oil spills. The frequency of oil spills is shown in table 1, along with a summary of their impacts on wildlife.

Source: Aronson et al. (2011)

From the table, it is clear that oil spills in Antarctica don’t happen as often as the spills that appear in the news from drilling sites. Over the past 30 years, Aronson et al. (2011) seem to report just five spills. Interestingly, all of the reported oil spills have occurred during Antarctica’s summer, confirming that these are impacts from tourism. Some of these oil spills had no reported effects, demonstrating that there should be no concern about tourism related oil spills, right?

Not quite! The reason why oil spills in Antarctica are problematic is that Antarctica does not have infrastructure to deal with oil spills properly. They don’t have infrastructure to undertake large scale clean-up operations or clean up oil soaked mammals. Moreover it is difficult to conduct these operations because of harsh conditions during the winter. Because of this, the effects of large oil spills can have long run impacts of marine and terrestrial wildlife.

Bahia Paraiso

The largest oil spill that happened was when the Bahia Paraiso tourist ship sank, carrying 130 tourists (but luckily they all evacuated just before the sinking!). The wildlife impacts of this spill were significant. The South Polar Skua, pictured in figure 1, is a sea bird found prominently in Antarctica. Antarctica is the bird’s natural habitat. Following the oil spill in 1989, the mortality rate among this bird species increased sharply and remained high while the oil was present. This could have been because the birds feed on krill and fish, both of these were chemically contaminated as a result of the spill. Young chicks were affected the most, with all of the chicks of a sample of 53 nests dying during the spill in December (Eppley and Rubega, 1990).  One reason for this was that parents had been fouled by the diesel oil when they went out looking for food in oil slicks (where fish and krill are found). Because of this, they spent more time away from their nests to bathe in freshwater ponds before returning to their nests. In the meantime this left young chicks unprotected and vulnerable to attack by other skuas. This affect was widespread and affected the entire population.

Figure 1: South Polar Skua

Other effects of this oil spill include the transfer of oil from parents to young or from prey to predator; changes in food availability due to effects on other populations and toxicity resulting in mortality of Adélie penguins. 

So the bottom line is that oil spills are catastrophic to wildlife in Antarctica and wouldn’t even happen if it wasn’t for all those tourists and tourist companies making careless mistakes. The new score is negative impacts: 3, positive/natural impacts: 1.

Again, I understand this post may be slightly depressing, so I would like to end with a few positive points. I came across the ytravel blog which includes a page about Antarctica. Along with a great selection of photos of Antarctica, it also includes a list of reasons to visit Antarctica! It can be accessed by clicking here. Also, my next post will be about how Antarctic treaties and international laws are trying to protect Antarctica – it’s not all doom and gloom! Until then, I’m going to leave you with a short video to brighten up this post, illustrating why we should celebrate the wildlife in Antarctica. Although note - it seems that some of the clips were videoed by tourists!

Edit: If you would like to know more about tourism in Antarctica, Fiona has a wonderful post about it and also gives her perspective on tourism. Here is a link to her blog.

Holidaying in Antarctica

Antarctica has become a popular tourist destination over the years. First starting in the 1950s, expedition cruises take tourists to see the wildlife, unique scenery and geology, and visit research centres. Nowhere else on Earth can visitors can go to a continent totally surrounded by the sea and observe some of the world’s rarest species in some of the world’s harshest conditions. These are all reasons why tourism is gaining momentum and why the tourist season has increased to 173 days per year (Aronson et al. 2011). But how is the tourism industry affecting the wildlife in Antarctic?

Penguins

Before the 1950s, wildlife in Antarctica was not used to seeing humans in their habitats very much. Human activity was mainly focussed on research and so a lot of human activity was conducted in research centres – no one was actively looking for penguins or seals or whales. Now that they are, some penguin species are reacting to them, while others are not.

I found this funny cartoon, portraying this point:

Figure 1. Adapted from Antarctic-monument.org  

Seventeen species of penguins can be found on Antarctica. Of these, there are four penguin species that breed on the Antarctic continent itself: the Adelie, the Emperor, the Chinstrap and the Gentoo penguins (Antarctic Connection, 2014). Lynch et al. (2010) conducted a study on Petermann Island (see figure 3) which found that the Gentoo penguin has shown a reduction in breeding productivity in areas where tourists frequently visit. One explanation for this could be that they are less likely to establish a nest in areas that are frequently visited. Although correlation does not mean causation, it’s in my view that tourist visits has played a role in their population because visiting their habitats can be unsettling.

In spite of this, surprisingly Lynch et al. (2010) also found in their study that the Adélie penguin was not affected by frequent tourist visits in terms of breeding. This shows that the effect of tourist visits is species specific and therefore can be difficult to measure. Figure 2 shows the penguins.

Figure 2. Gentoo penguin (left) and Adélie penguin (right)

The Lynch et al. (2010) paper was very insightful to read. Even though I read it to learn about the impacts of tourism on the breeding productivities of the Adélie and Gentoo penguins, I also learnt about a new potential human cause of a trending population decline of the Adélie penguin. During their study, the authors realised that there was a tick infestation among the Adélie penguin colonies at Petermann Island in North West Antarctica, a popular tourist destination because of its proximity to the southern tip of Argentina. This is shown in figure 3. The fact that tourists frequently visit the Island can help explain the spread of this I. uriae parasite. The evidence leads me to believe that the I. uriae parasite was transported from another North Western Island because the authors point out that this was the first time they had witnessed it on Petermann Island since they started investigating penguins there twenty years ago. This demonstrates that tourist expedition cruises may have transported it from another island. The authors also mention that they can’t rule out that climate change could have created conditions allowing its existence in this region. Either explanation holds humans responsible, at least in part, of this occurrence.

Figure 3: Petermann Island

Invasive species

This leads me nicely to my next topic about how tourism causes the invasion of foreign species. Tourist ships tend to contain double hulls. This is a cause of concern because double hulls provide insulation against temperature reductions as ships make their way to Antarctica, allowing invasive species to survive. An example of an invasive species is the mussel species, Mytilus Galloprovincialis, which was observed to have survived in a sea chest on a supply ship by Lee and Chown (2007). Another invasion species found is a type of green algae called Enteromorpha Intestinolis which was discovered growing on Half Moon Island off the West Antarctic Peninsula, apparently because it was transported there by tourist vessels (Clayton et al., 1997; Aronson et al., 2011). These invasive species can be problematic because they affect the food chain, invade habitats and can potentially initiate and spread new diseases to existing marine wildlife. The latter effect is demonstrated by the tick infestation found on Petermann Island. 

All in all, it seems that tourism in Antarctica is having a somewhat damaging effect on wildlife. Understanding these impacts have actually put me off wanting to visit Antarctica for a holiday, then again, I don't think I would be able to survive the cold anyway! So far, the scores for negative human impacts verses positive/ natural impacts on Antarctica are 2-1.

Apologies for such as negative post! Sometimes the impacts of humans on wildlife are harmful and I am trying to shed light on this. My next post will be about oil spills from tourist ships and how this affects sea birds and other wildlife. So until then, thanks for reading!

Tourism in Antarctica – An Introduction

Today’s post will be a light one, introducing tourism and the different ways that it impacts Antarctica.

It is correct to say that there are no continents on Earth that humans have not touched. Human visits to Antarctica were initially for research only. However humans are visiting the continent in vast numbers for no reason other than for entertainment and pleasure (see Figure 2). Seeing wildlife is perhaps the only reason why tourists venture out to Antarctica, but ironically, their activities are harming the very environment which they claim to idolise. The visits have been identified as causing disturbance to wildlife, having negative impacts on vegetation and soil and leaving litter ashore (Bauer, 1994). Furthermore, Aronson et al. (2011) identify further disruptions to the environment such as pollution and the introduction of invasive species. These impacts are no doubt harmful to the Antarctic ecosystem. This raises some important questions such as: to what extent is the industry being regulated, what does the future of Antarctic tourism look like given the issues concerning ice instability and global warming and how severe is the wildlife impact of tourism?

Figure 1: Tourists observing penguins

Figure 2 shows the pace of tourism growth in recent years. This graph is an indication of what the future for Antarctica holds and the severity of the impact of humans through tourism. The figure shows that total tourism increased to more than 45,000 visits per year from 2007 to 2008. After 2008, there has been an overall decline in tourism, falling to about 37,000 per year in 2009. This is presumable attributed to the global financial crisis and reduction in consumer spending as incomes fell. Nevertheless, tourist numbers are still higher than they have been for the past 20 years.

Figure 2: Estimated numbers of passengers travelling annually to Antarctica on expeditions and cruise-only tour ships between 1992-2010. Source: Aronson et al. (2011)

Keep a look out for the answers to the above questions and insightful discussions on this topic!