I've already blogged about the rogue wave that killed one cruise passenger, but I want to take up the question whether Antarctica ought to be visited at all anymore — or at least not routinely by bucket-listers on cruise ships.
Tourism to the Antarctic has steadily increased in the last 30 years, with 74,401 people traveling there in the 2019-20 season, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. Roughly 6,700 people traveled there in the 1992-93 season, according to the association....
There's a conundrum about travel: The things you especially want to see other people also want to see. Your experience is impaired by the crowds. But you've got to admit that you're one of the people in the crowd, and the crowd is nothing more than multiple people like you. If you don't like it, why are you there, being part of the problem? If only more of those other people would avoid this place because it's a tourist trap, then it wouldn't be a tourist trap, and you could enjoy it.
This conundrum is best summed up with the old line: Nobody goes there anymore: It's too crowded.
That line is usually attributed to Yogi Berra, but is he the true source? Quote Investigator concludes:
[T]he earliest instances of this remark were anonymous. The comedians Rags Ragland and Ukie Sherin employed the quip, as did the writer John McNulty. In addition, there is some evidence that Yogi Berra employed the joke, but in all cases the jest was already in circulation.
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It's ok for the elite to travel there, just not us hoi polloi. Like when they take private jets to a climate conference at a tropical resort.
74,000 a year is not very much. One mishap is hardly “a wake-up call.”
In most places, no matter how touristed, it’s not hard to get away from the tourists. And there’s plenty stuff not in the guide book that is just as worth the effort as most of the stuff that is. Antartica is different, of course, because it’s hard to get to and too dangerous to go off on your own. But still, 74,000 is just a few hundred a day.
People need to have access to our world. Making Access more restricted makes it more expensive and elitist. Places are important and in this day and age of nature depravation caused mental illness epidemic, more people should be encouraged to get out more to experience wildness. The more people who do it, the less expensive and less elitist it becomes.
Today Antarctica, tomorrow the Moon.
Thousands of people view the Grand Canyon every year and I've not heard of any damage or lessening of the experience. Some even float down it in rafts putting themselves at risk but apparently without any to the river.
Full Disclosure: I flew over the Grand Canyon once without damaging it. Very impressive.
"The sea is always right!"
Everyone hates a tourist.
74,000 is just a few hundred a day.
Presumably they almost all go during the few months of Antarctic summer, so it's closer to 1,000/day, but why pick on Antarctica, one of the least visited places, and least harmed in any way by tourism? It's more of a problem in places that have a more confined space or limited road access like Machu Picchu or Pompei. And in those places the governments have begun to restrict or divert visitors, which is an obvious solution (though privatization would likely be even better).
The don't call it a bucket list for nothing.
What kind of damage does Althouse do when she ventures out to take pictures each morning?
And how long can society accept her choices?
Perhaps we should all stay inside, rapidly brain-age, and die.
Seems every time I've read about rogue waves, besides Terry Reid's album, the story is from Antarctica.
This rogue wave story was such an interesting coincidence for me. Just a week earlier, I had been doing some research on Antarctica as a travel destination because a friend and her adult family members are taking such a trip. I learned that December is the best time to undertake the adventure. Those 74,000 visitors are mostly compressed into just a couple of months.
" I want to take up the question whether Antarctica ought to be visited at all anymore — or at least not routinely by bucket-listers on cruise ships."
Okay, Karen, but why not make it "any tourists on cruise ships who wear shorts while flying to and from the cruise embarkation port" which would allow you to prohibit most of the activities that seem to offend your your personal prejudices. Better yet, since rouge waves occur all over the world, not just near Antarctica, wouldn't it be safer to just ban all those icky cruise ships?
Antarctica is one of the few destinations I would consider taking a cruise to. How marvelous! And I guarantee I would be happy others were with me in such an inhuman location.
We took a cruise to Antarctica several years ago and it was one of the best travel experiences of our lives. We kayaked and hiked in some pretty incredible places and saw things we'll never see anywhere else. We'll do it again when we can.
The Consultive Nations Treaty governs Antarctica. They set limits on the total number of visitors, where ships can travel and their length of travel, all to limit human footprint. And of course, the UN climate creeps are tapped to give captive cruise ships passengers regular lectures on the horrors of global warming. My favorite was the biologist who'd been studying Adelie penguins for twenty years. He asserted Adelie penguin populations that had inhabited one side of the Antarctica Peninsula for as long as he'd been studying them were dying off because the ice was melting. On the last day aboard ship the news broke that an expedition team armed with drones had located a hitherto unknown supercolony of Adelie penguins in the Waddell Sea, i.e., just over the mountain range from where this scientist had been tromping around for twenty years. This previously unknown supercolony was thriving in plentiful, similar ice conditions and of course had never been counted before. Adelies are doing very well, thank you.
It's easy to predict the future. But knowing what in fact is happening around you is a much bigger challenge....
I took a cruise to Antarctica on a larger ship (with Holland America). The people on the ship seemed to fall in a few groups.
Birders - I learned a bunch about birds, much now forgotten.
7th Continent checkers - My traveling companion was there for that.
Photographers - That's me.
It was an amazing experience that I recommend to anyone who loves travel and has the time and money.
Of course easy to say as someone who had almost freakishly good weather on our trip.
A 'wake-up call'? To what? That too many tourists will make Antarctica tip over, like Guam did?
A rogue wave is one thing, but the bigger problem comes when the waves get organized.
Mount Everest is technicolor with the bodies of climbers who succumbed to the mountain. Where's the wake up call there?
Why does one accident, or several for that matter, constitute a "wake up call"?
What the beejeebers is a "wake up call"? An excuse to write a meaningless article?
Why should Antarctica be off limits for tourism?
Cruise ships don't count as traveling to any destination, IMO. Doubly so for Antarctica.
Life is an exercise in risk management. Enjoy your viability in gay, rational, reasonable, moderate form.
Was that "rogue wave" a wake up call?"
Oliver Stone included a wave for dramatic effect...
Gordon Gekko: This is your wake up call, pal, go to work.
[Wave crashes.]
Almost 43,000 Americans died in auto accidents in 2021. Since records began in 1899, almost 4 million Americans have died on US highways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
Should that be a wakeup call? Or is it just that we've come to accept hundreds of highway deaths every week as unremarkable but a freak accident that kills one person is somehow different?
Is a rouge wave the main reason to limiting visits?
I don't think these are exclusive to Antarctica. They are, apparently very rare in sizes that endanger cruise ships.
But scary words collect eyeballs.
As to numbers visiting... Announce possible restrictions and watch the numbers skyrocket.
I need Antarctica and South American to fill out my continent card...
Politician: "A wave hit the ship ..."
Interviewer: "Is that unusual?"
Politician: "Oh yeah! At sea? Chance in a million."
https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
Killed and injured from broken glass after the ship took a rough wave hit seems to me to be more a ship's interior design problem than a 'should people venture there". But yes, taking people who aren't acclimated to a rolling, pitching ship and with weak physical ability is risky for injury.
"Rogue" waves are nothing more than constructive interference of multiple wave patterns, and made more "impressive" if there was a hole from destructive interference right before. The do focus the mind, but falling in a hole can be just as rough. From what I know, the biggest "rogues" are reported off the Cape of Good Hope.
My first experience with wave "interference" before I'd ever heard of such was in a lake on a holiday. Small wind wave, but the wake interference from all the boaters zipping about created some big holes in relation to small speed boats.
I've only been to 60 South just into the unobstructed Southern Ocean flow around the globe on the Pacific side. It was rough, a storm that hung up on the Antarctic peninsula stalled us from getting our sampling done and we ran out of time before needing to start working back north. Little nerve wracking with those 3kt contacts out beyond the visible range. Captain freaked when dawn came one morning and while on station, 4 huge icebergs had drifted to within 5 miles. First time they had been visible as we'd gotten some clear weather. Usually the bergs that big brought their on reduced vis weather. Wait until one of these ships clips a growler. That'll be a news event.
One less, one more, obviously, if you subscribe to the precautionary principle to ward off [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change in chaos.
We did a trans-Atlantic from New York to the British Isles via the Azores in April 2018 on one of Norwegian Cruise Lines 'super ships' that carry 3-4000 people. Out in the middle of the Atlantic if you stood still you could feel the shudders a few seconds apart when the bow of the ship hit the bottom of a wave trough. They closed the upper decks due to high winds several days, too. Ain't nowhere at sea that's safe.
Althouse: "I want to take up the question whether Antarctica ought to be visited at all anymore — or at least not routinely by bucket-listers on cruise ships.”
I have visited Antarctica twice, in 2007 and 2008. Not as a “bucket list” project, but I thought to see what was happening because of climate change. I took different parts of my family each time. Via Ushuaia.
I would say that our experience lives with us to this day, has made us more interested and concerned about climate change, more interested and caring about the fragility of a place like Antarctica. More willing and engaged in the whole climate change issue.
The human numbers there are so infinitesimal vs the size of the world’s seventh continent, that we have as close to zero impact as one could have. Consider that fact that everywhere we went were legions of penguins, crapping everywhere. And eating the fish. And seals and orcas and humpbacks, ditto. We, the humans, came in antiseptic booties and left nothing behind. We are *nothing* there.
If you “want to take up the question” about visiting, I’d say the answer is YES, it ought be visited by homo sapiens. Including you, the Althouses. It’s a wonderful life-changing experience with wonderful passengers, and wonderful on-board experts. Humans who leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but photos.
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