Winter wonderland

22 September 2007

At the beginning of 1984 — more than 23 years ago — I was lucky enough to be invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its research and supply vessel, the John Biscoe, on a six-week trip to Antarctica.

In my book Antarctica: The Last Great Wilderness, which I wrote on my return, I tried to describe the effect that Antarctica had had on me: ‘When the elephant seals and the fur seals mass alongside those penguins on the beaches; when the albatross and petrels and blue-eyed shags beat their way across the icy waves; when you glimpse at close quarters — as I did one manky morning in the Lemaire Channel — the blurred shape of a humpback whale, you can quite easily believe you are in paradise, and a very special paradise at that.’

When I first went to Antarctica there was virtually no organised tourism apart from a couple of vessels, like the Lindblad Explorer, making occasional visits. How things have changed! My second visit to Antarctica, earlier this year, was actually on a tourist ship. The Antarctic Dream was built in Holland in 1957, incorporated into the Chilean Navy in 1959, rebuilt completely in 2004/2005 and refurbished as an Antarctic expedition cruise ship. In its new configuration, there are 38 double cabins located on four decks.

The Antarctic Dream is by no means unique. Today, Antarctica is witnessing a veritable explosion of tourists, with up to 40 ships operating in Antarctic waters, mainly around the Peninsula, as well as — for those who have time for a more extended visit — South Georgia and the Falklands.

Towards the end of my most recent Antarctic voyage, the Antarctic Dream called in at Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The base at Port Lockroy, designated an historic site and monument under the Antarctic Treaty, was built in 1944 to house a secret British mission codenamed Operation Tabarin. It was subsequently taken over by BAS for ionospheric research.

A few weeks before the Antarctic Dream arrived, Princess Anne herself had visited the site as patron of the United Kingdom’s Antarctic Heritage Trust, a splendid organisation whose mission is to protect and restore Britain’s Antarctic heritage.

If anyone is in a position to have an informed view on the issue of Antarctic tourism, it must be Rick Atkinson, who serves as the Trust’s project leader at Port Lockroy. Atkinson spends four months of the year at Port Lockroy in conditions which exactly replicate those experienced by the wartime base. His team operates a post office, which each year handles over 40,000 items of mail, as well as running a souvenir shop and environmental monitoring programme.