UKH

Hi All,

The wife and I are *considering* a trip to Antarctica, but are worried that the month we choose may not be the best with regard to wildlife. Obviously it would be an expensive trip, and would not want to choose a sub-optimal month.

We are not climbing, and the focus of the trip for us will be on wildlife, especially penguins and sea birds. We are *considering* mid February as the month to leave Ushuaia, sail to Falklands, then South Georgia, then to the Antarctic Peninsula, then back to Ushuaia. 

So, has anyone been, what was your experience like, what was your focus, what did you like (and not like) , did you think you choose a good month, etc.

Feel free to PM me if you prefer to remain below the radar, LOL.

Best Regards to all UKC-ers.

PS-yes, we will get some sea sickness tablets, LOL.

You don't need to worry about any particular time - the summer is so short that the wildlife is pretty active at any time that you're likely to go.

A bigger issue is what vessel you'll be on. The wildlife is most active within the ice pack and at the ice edges, including in large polynyas. Most tourist vessels are only ice strengthened - if that - so are pretty ice-shy. 

You'll see more sea birds - albatross and petrels in particular - on the crossing than actually near the coast. Skuas are more prevalent around the coast but they're nasty little bastards

I've only ever gone for work (I'm an oceanographer specialising in the Antarctic margins) so I can't comment too much on particular tour companies - I would definitely ensure that you go with an accredited member of IAATO though. I'm also not personally familiar with the Peninsula - most of my sea time is in the East Antarctic sector.

Will

Went there over Christmas and New Year and it was fabulous. Good weather. Masses of wildlife. I think that most ships do not go far enough down the Peninsula for ice to be an issue. We did many landings off zodiacs onto beaches.

You are doing right in planning one of the longer trips, i.e. via Falklands and South Georgia. The latter is scenically stunning and for that reason was the best part of the trip for me.

Robin

I have no experience of AA and wont be able to give advice but wanted to throw out a POV which might make you think twice about this as a holiday destination. There has been much discussion lately about climate change, glacial melts and our impact on the environment.  Some of the destinations you suggest are sensitive and need protecting and therefore is it sensible for tourists to visit there given the distance and sensitivity concerned.

Are we as a species better off not visiting some of our most delicate ecosystems now for holidays until we have stabilisied them, leaving the visits there out of necessity - as with our scientist friend up thread?

I realise that this is counter intuitive when some African wild places need the $$ to try and incentivise the poachers not to kill the animals.

Please dont take this as in any way passing judgement as you mention locations I would dearly love to visit but I wonder whether just because we can visit them, does that mean that we should visit them.

Just thinking aloud.

If you want to see whales then go in Feb.

if you want to see the Penguins & other nesting birds then go before Christmas

We went out in November/December and the wildlife is fantastic. 

Falkland Islands: Rock Hopper penguins,Gentoos & Black browned albatrosses

South Georgia is just awesome! you walk amongst the fur seal, elephant seals, king penguins (in their 100,000's) and much much more.

While at sea there are albatrosses, petrels and many other sea birds to watch flying around the ship. 

We travelled with 'One Ocean' - can't recommend them highly enough. Lots of opportunities for walking (short walks mainly) & photography & lots of experienced friendly staff

edit: Ice can be a problem before Christmas and we were not able to go through the Lemaire Strait due to excess ice. But then you are travelling in a wild & inhospitable place and you can only do what the weather allows you to do.

One Ocean are a very eco aware company and do lots of work with environmentalists. Landings are carefully monitored and they expect us tourists to leave the minimum of impact.

 Always happy to share more info 

Bill

Thanks for posting everyone, great to hear a diverse range of responses. Not sure who gave you the thumbs down DrunkenBakers, it was not me. All viewpoints are valid in my book.

Still worried that Feb may not be the best time to go, it seems general comments are to go earlier for penguins and seabirds. That would be our focus, penguins and seabirds. Would hate to go all that way and all the penguins have bu88ered off.

Yep, I've seen a Skua eat a royal penguin chick, I assume it was a chick as only the feet were not eaten.

This was my thought on the matter too. Apart form the impact of actually getting there, Antarctica just doesn't seem to be a place where tourism can happen in a sustainable way.

Why is that, and what do you mean exactly by 'sustainable'?

Remember that Antarctica is far from a pristine wilderness, despite that popular misconception; the blue whales and fur seals  that the OP has a vanishingly small chance of seeing - regardless of what time of year he visits - didn't just naturally evaporate. They were harvested into near-extinction by a multinational industrial project

Limited and well-managed tourism that follows CCAMLR and Treaty regulations (such as offered by IAATO members) is entirely sustainable, and an incredibly valuable way of engaging wealthy and influential people (they have to be somewhat wealthy to get there) on the very real issues facing Antarctic climate change. Certainly it wouldn't support huge numbers of people, but there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater

We have checked, and the tour operator has full member status of IAATO.

 XXX holds Full Membership Status with IAATO, an organization that advocates, promotes and ensures safe and environmentally responsible private-sector travel to the Antarctic. All operations aboard our ship adhere to IAATO’s strict rules, regulations and guidelines for operating in Antarctica. For more information visit www.iaato.org

The extreme climate means that Antarctic ecosystems are fragile and very limited in their ability to absorb pollution or disruption of species. The potential for cumulative damage is very real. ustainable: as in avoiding all of that.

Thanks. I'm aware of the history of past industrial activity in the Antarctic.

Are you saying that as long as only a small number of "somewhat wealthy" tourists get to go there then we're ok? How long is that going to last? Businesses need growth, and you don't get that from selling to a small number of rich people most of whom will only visit once.

I get that IAATO are trying to do the right thing. But they're a self-regulating trade body. In the end their job is to enable their member's commercial activities while avoiding outside regulation. These businesses are in the tourism business, and it's abundantly clear that tourism (a) eventually goes mass-market, (b) eventually ruins the thing that it's trying to sell, and (c) eventually moves on to the next new thing. E.g the garbage mounds along the Everest base camp trek, or the closure of Maya Bay. Plenty of examples.

And all that flying just to even get there from here? Go and ask the IPCC about that. Twelve years left, remember?

Antarctic ecosystems aren't actually that fragile, compared to many other ecosystems. The physical Antarctic environment has the potential for very sudden change in response to climate change, particularly collapse of major ice shelves, but it's really not clear the the marine ecosystem will be unable to adapt even to that. Penguin species are changing their distributions in response to sea ice changes, but no species is really under threat.  Antarctic krill were thought to be sea ice-obligate, but the krill fishery is concentrated in a region which has had almost no summer sea ice for some years, with no real decline in catch or size or distribution.

If I was going to ban tourism to a particular ecosystem out of concern for it's damage to that ecosystem, I'd ban tourism to the Great Barrier Reef many years before I'd even consider the Antarctic continental shelf.

I'm saying that a well-managed tourist industry with limited numbers is entirely sustainable, and in fact studies consistently show that permanent research stations (which are really just flag poles or military installations with scientists as window dressing) have a much bigger environmental footprint. I don't really care about the wealth or otherwise of the visitors, but the economics of the endeavour mean that the clients are likely to be relatively well off. Rightly or wrongly, we live in a world where those are the people most likely to have influence to affect climate policy, or if they're seriously wealthy to give philanthropic support to environmental research. 

Nobody has the right to ban visitors to Antarctica anyway, so rather than attempt an unenforceable ban it's probably better to engage in a way that ensures the industry remains sustainable. Personally I'd like to see a wider distribution of destinations rather than 'honey-potting' of the west Antarctic Peninsula, but that discussion is going to be much easier if there is some engagement.

Historically, what seasonal nesting restrictions have been most successful; those that engaged the local climbing community and allowed a degree of flexibility, or those that outright banned access to climbing areas? 

See my point above; IAATO regulations are more stringent than most national Antarctic programs, and have been shown to have a much smaller environmental footprint. You hit the nail on the head when you said that their aim is to avoid outside regulation - the last thing they want is to get too deeply involved with permitting by the bureaucratic pudding of Antarctic Treaty signatories. Hence, they behave beyond reproach. 

I can already show you some impressively disgusting garbage mounds in Antarctica, and they have nothing to do with tourism.  

I'm familiar with the IPCC's projections - I'm a contributing author on one of those reports. Realistically, a minimal once-in-a-lifetime along haul trip to an amazing and threatened environment has less impact that regular (twice-yearly say) short-haul cheap flights around Europe. I wholeheartedly agree that we should all be mindful of our the impact of our decisions in terms of cost and benefit, but that doesn't necessarily equate to a wholesale 'nyet' to everything with a carbon footprint.   

Thanks for taking the time to write that. You're clearly very knowledgeable about these issues. As a layman, albeit hopefully reasonably informed, I'm happy to be reassured by what you've said.

A couple of points though. Regarding ecosystem fragility, I was thinking of this less in terms of climate change and more in terms of response to pollution (large events like the MV Exporer sinking, as well as the cumulative impact of low-level pollution), habitat disruption (sonar, nesting site incursions, etc), and the introduction of pathogens and non-native species. My understanding is that antarctic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable in these respects - does this have any merit?

And away from the science, is there any evidence that tourism actually feeds through into significant support for environmental research or conservation?

I'm still pessimistic about long-term destructive nature of tourism.

Anyway, thanks again.

When I visited Macquarie Island, a sub-antarctic island halfway between Bluff, NZ and Antarctica, great care was exercised as to what one could take onto the island, and in what state. For example all clothing had to spotlessly clean, which meant tweezers to remove objects such as potential seeds, vacuuming to remove smaller material, followed by meticulous inspections from our guides (actually park rangers). Likewise boots (which went through the above process) also had to be disinfected with some noxious chemical (which I have also seen used elsewhere, as a participant in the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society working bee...   http://rainforest.org.au/new/). 

Strict rules were applied to approaching wildlife, with a exclusion zone of x metres from all wildlife (can't remember the exact distance, 6 metres perhaps). However, if you were stationary and wildlife approached you, that was acceptable. Of course, you would not want a Sea Lion or Fur Seal approaching you as they can (and would bite chunks out of you, and can move very fast).  The Royal penguins are very curious, for 30 seconds, until their mates bash into them, LOL.

At Sandy Bay, with 100,000+ (???) King Penguins there is a demarcation line that you can not cross, clearly marked. Of course, you will see, and be near to hundreds of King Penguins before you get there. Likewise with the Royal Penguin colony at Sandy Bay, there is a demarcation line that you can not cross. And yes you see hundreds of Royal Penguins before you get there too.

The colony at Hurd Point with 180,000 breading pairs is off limits to tourists. To quote Australian Antarctic Division...Hurd Point is home to the largest royal penguin colony in the world, which contains over 180,000 breeding pairs of birds during summer ....

Likewise, with nesting Sea Birds (mainly Southern Royal Albatross) there where strict guidelines as to how close one could approach, and of course if the bird exhibited any stress, one had to back off.

On a side note, species decline is world-wide, for example the African Penguin population has crashed drastically over recent years due to over-fishing.  A quick google search says (albeit unverified)........In 1900, it was estimated that about 1.5-million birds lived on Dassen Island alone. There are now only about 21 000 breeding pairs of African penguins left in the world and they are listed as "Endangered".

Food for thought.

Thanks Raymondo. The stats re African penguins are very disturbing.

It's a good point, and I get that's what you're driving at. To be honest I don't think anyone knows how fragile the ecosystem is. I'm not a biologist/ecosystem expert myself but I do sit in on marine management meetings as a token physical scientist, and my impression is that we really know very little. For a start, we don't know what the natural state of the ecosystem is, because nobody was doing surveys before the loss of the great whales, which must have had an enormous impact just by dint of the incredible amount of krill they must have consumed.

As another example, until recently it was thought (and to a certain extent still is) that sea ice is crucial for the recruitment of krill stocks, but as far as we can tell krill stocks are doing ok in regions that have effectively no summer sea ice any more.

Sonar is a tricky one, that probably has a bigger footprint from scientists than tourists. We'd really like to have sonar installations to navigate autonomous observing platforms under sea ice but we  don't know how to do that without adding to marine noise. The major issue is cost though. 

Obviously a catastrophic event like a maritime disaster and associated oil spill would have a huge local impact, but that could be said of any ecosystem. I think sea ice can mean that oil spills remain concentrated in a location rather than dispersal.

Good question, I'm not aware of any studies that have addressed this (that doesn't mean there aren't any). For what it's worth, there is good anecdotal evidence. Colleagues who've worked as 'on-board' scientists on the flashier cruise ships say that it's been an invaluable 'in' to informing the well-to-do on the impacts of climate change (including natural climate-change sceptics) - whether that translated as action when they got home I don't know. The Australian Antarctic Division for many years has run a program allowing Federal MPs to visit Antarctica, and this has been incredibly successful at fostering bipartisan support for Australia's Antarctic presence (again, including amongst some real pro-coal monstrosities), and means that Australia is now one of the clearest voices for continuance and expansion of the Antarctic Treaty.

With good reason, but everything humans do has an impact that must be balanced. I certainly don't want to see Antarctica become the next Machu Pichu or Yosemite, but I don't immediately see that risk on the horizon, at least not for a decade.

It should be noted that Macquarie Island is actually part of Australia (it's a national park managed by the Australian Antarctic Division), so a degree of government enforcement is possible there that is not really possible on Antarctica itself.

That said, the sort of restrictions and bio-security precautions that Raymondo describes are pretty standard for reputable tour operators. 

Thank you for that. Really appreciate you taking the time to post.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231823468_Carbon_dioxide_emissions...

Seems a lot of CO2 to emit just to see some animals in a habitat we're destroying.

Can I recommend the islands on the West coast of Scotland as a lot more accessible and teaming with amazing flora and fauna.