MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Significant drop in visitors to Antarctica this season

The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators or IAATO has reported that the number of tourists visiting Antarctica is projected to drop significantly in the 2008/09 season according to a report from Outside Online

Preliminary numbers show that an estimated 36,000 people are forecasted to visit the frozen continent this 2008/09 season, which is a 7.000 drop from the record high of 46.000 for the previous 2007/08 season. Like all things currently the global recession is being blamed for the down turn, and the season is expected to remain slow. IAATO predicts that the numbers will begin to rebound gradually in 2010 but probably won't reach record numbers again until at least 2011 or 2012. However the down turn in visitors to Antarctica is likely to be hailed as good news by environmentalists, who have been issuing dire warnings the past few years on the impact that travel in the area would have on the fragile climate there. Some have called for putting caps on the number of visitors to the region to help protect the penguin and seal populations, while others cite the near disastrous accidents involving cruise ships over the past couple of years as reasons why there should be limits to travel in the area. Steve Wellmeier, IAATO's executive director stresses that the continent is massive in size, larger than Australia, and gets relatively few visitors each year. "We're talking about a continent that is larger than Australia and we're talking about a number of tourists that would fill a football stadium" he is quoted by Reuters. "Seriously, is this a number for concern?"