Tourism in Antarctica: Edging Toward the (Risky) Mainstream

Accidents are rare, but not unheard-of. In November 2007, the MS Explorer, a Liberian-flagged vessel carrying about 100 passengers and 50 crew, cracked its hull on submerged ice, then started to take on water and list severely. Those aboard evacuated to lifeboats around 2:30 a.m., then floated in the cold for more than three hours before another ship, the cruise liner Nordnorge, rescued them. No one was killed or injured, but that was in part because of the weather.

“Within two hours after the passengers and crew were aboard the Nordnorge, the weather conditions deteriorated with gale force winds,” according to the official investigative report into the incident, which was conducted by the Liberian Bureau of Maritime Affairs. “If the Nordnorge’s speed to the scene had been reduced due to rough sea conditions, there may have been fatalities from hypothermia.”

The environment didn’t fare as well. The MS Explorer slipped beneath the waves carrying more than 55,000 gallons of oil, lubricant and petrol; two days later, an oil slick spread over an area of nearly two square miles near the site of the wreck. A Chilean naval ship passed through to try to speed up the dispersal of the fuel, but the report noted that the “oil sheen” was still visible more than a year later.

Ms. Kelley said that measures have been introduced since the Explorer incident, including the International Maritime Organization’s new “polar code,” which, she said, imposes “real limits on where and how vessels can operate and how new ships should be built.” Fuel tanks must now be situated away from the vessel’s hull, for example; navigation officers are required to have more experience and environmental rules have been tightened.

But as visitor numbers grow, so, too, does the risk of an accident. And while all tour operators in the Antarctic are currently IAATO members or provisional members, a status that offers them a degree of support, there is no guarantee that companies new to the region will see the value in joining the organization. If they decide to go it alone, there is nothing to stop them.

“There have been incidents, but we have always been quite lucky in the sense that maybe the weather conditions were right or there were other ships around,” said Machiel Lamers, an associate professor at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “Having a couple of thousands of passengers and crew in Antarctic waters is, of course, another thing than having a couple of hundred.”