Despite the isolation, high winds, snow, ice, raging seas in Antarctica, and for hardy types, precisely for such reasons, the continent will be visited by around 11,200 individuals this coming tourist season, all of them except for say 130, coming aboard a cruise liner. Such a total may only be 400 people more than the number of visitors last season, specifically from mid November through February, it was still able to jump 70 percent higher than the previous 6,585 seasons that Antarctica opened itself to tourists. Antarctica's many watchers are growing worried towards its environment and warned that Antarctic visitors could grow by the thousands annually.

For cruising the White Continent, a single individual will have to pay around $20,000 and on the average, a 14 day cruise would cost him about $6,000 to $7,000 but then the traveler will have to cover his round trip air fare as he will need to come from the area where 90 percent of trips leave, in Tierra del Fuego found in Ushuaia, Argentina. Despite Antarctica appearing to be insulated from the effects caused by the influx of tourists due to the high price of going there along with the hard-to-contend-with climate and geography, most of today's environmental experts see this to cause lasting ecological disaster.

The director of the Antarctic Project said that people should have an opportunity to see Antarctica's beauty, but there should be a cap on the number of visitors and a ban on any new sites. Forty various countries containing 200 or more environmental teams use this as their secretariat for the Washington based initiative. There is truth to the fact that most who come to Antarctica come back committed to this continent's conservation, but then the down part is that this is a fragile land and there are too many people simply loving it exceedingly.

A fair limit of only 6,000 guests annually is being proposed by this director as he is very much concerned about the damage caused by the thousands of travelers heading to the usual places which is home to the most species of birds, penguins and seals in the 800 mile Antarctic Peninsula. But on one specific occasion at a time, it is extremely rare that visitors setting foot on land go beyond a hundred people. It is sad that animals are bothered as they rest, and neither can they get some food for their babies or for their own selves so this is very harmful.

She adds that even science can't tell if this will have a long term impact. Some of the fears include tourists touching flora and throwing garbage recklessly. This is the answer why numbers of experienced staffs ascertain that whenever visitors go ashore, they create minimal if not no impact at all and this is also the reason behind why tour operators stick to guidelines promoted by the system developed under the Antarctic Treaty. Such series of agreements including the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, since agreed on by 43 countries along with an environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998, put a restriction on mining and oil drilling, on top of providing other environmental safety measures along with limiting fishing trips and seasonal cruises around the White Continent.

The association of tour members, which is based in New York, saw to it that they all adopted the 100 person limit for shore visits, also employing zodiacs, which are motorized rubber boats for good reasons. Russian flags are being flown, this season, by nine air crafts out of the fifteen commissioned. The Soviet Union's break up presented a golden opportunity for tour operators as a number of small ships are now available. An average of 40 to 80 people are welcome aboard these ships, several vessels along one that is know to be an ice breaker, all of them being able to plow through ice with hardened hulls. Meanwhile, though, concern about Antarctica's environment persists. There is a possibility that one day, we worried about it needlessly even if there was no need to. But as we wait for science to bring forth the answer, it is best to take it upon ourselves and restrain our trips to the Frozen Continent.