Transcript:
Elizabeth Rush: I can still remember feeling like I didn't quite know how to prepare. We literally were going to be sort of beyond the reach of human civilization for three months. And I didn't know how to prepare for that. I can remember talking to someone who said, "Pack as if you're going to the moon.” And I thought that was pretty useless advice considering that I had never been to the moon.
I had a very hard time sleeping the night before. And I can remember waking up at like probably three thirty, four o'clock in the morning and running up to the bridge, which is where the captain steers the ship. And it's kind of this room with like windows on all sides in the shape of a V, and I ran up there and the light was sort of this like bruised blue color and I could just see the ice edge kind of emerging out of that gloaming and it was... really stunning. The only point of reference I have for it is it looked sort of like the wall in Game of Thrones.
It was just a wall of ice. And yet we drew really close to it and you could see all these incredible patterns and sort of like torqued surfaces and some places it looked like, you know, the edge of a giant clam and in other places it was sheer and vertical. And once you spend a lot of time with the ice, you start to recognize that it has all these different shades to it. It's not just white, it's a deep cerulean blue and foggy grays. And it was just really beautiful to watch all of these different shades of white emerge. I had never seen anything like it in my life.
There’s a reason people compare it to moonscapes and fantasy realms. It’s a place few people ever see. One we’re still trying to understand. Vast, mysterious, otherworldly and... yes, cold, they say — really, really cold. Antarctica. ‘The end of the Earth’.
A wild, pristine expanse of thousands of kilometers of ice, howling wind, towering glaciers. Home to some 20 million penguins, six species of seal... and, ever increasingly, cruise loads of tourists.
Once the domain of explorers and scientists, and maybe the odd millionaire, visiting Antarctica used to be truly out of the ordinary. No one even stepped foot on the continent until 1820. In the 1950s, just a few hundred visitors made the journey each year. By the 1990s, it was several thousand. Fast forward to now and... tourism to the ‘seventh continent’ is booming. Last year, a record 124,000 tourists visited Antarctica. That was nearly triple pre-pandemic numbers in 2019.
And it’s not slowing down. Tourism operators expect even more people in the coming seasons. Many drawn by the promise of seeing a disappearing world before it’s gone. Or... overrun. But as more cruise ships rock up, more and more people are asking: is it ever environmentally defensible to travel to a place like this? To put Antarctica on your bucket list? Because, as scientists warn, the very act of visiting is helping speed up its decline. Today on Living Planet, we’re diving into that dilemma. What’s tourism doing to Antarctica? And what does it tell us about how we treat other wild places? I’m Charli Shield.
Rush: I'd been writing about the early impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities all around the world. And I really wanted to see the source of that, those changes up close.
Elizabeth Rush is a writer and an assistant English professor, based at Brown University in Rhode Island.
In 2019, she flew from North America to the southernmost tip of South America — Punta Arenas in Chile, where she boarded an ice breaker headed for West Antarctica. She was joining a scientific mission to Thwaite's Glacier – as an artist in residence. Aboard the ice breaker were scientists, researchers and crew members. 57 people in total.
Rush: It was a really phenomenal mix… we had folks from Great Britain, Norway, Brazil. A lot of the crew was from the Philippines and Germany, Scotland. There were folks from all over the world on this boat and that was a really interesting, neat aspect of what we were doing.
It took them a whole month of voyaging through the Southern Ocean on the icebreaker to reach Thwaite's glacier. It's one of the world's most critical glaciers for determining how much sea levels will rise over the next century. Which is why it’s often called 'Doomsday Glacier' because it's about the size of Great Britain and it acts as a kind of cork for the West Antarctic ice sheet — holding a lot of its ice in place.
Rush: And because of where it sits in Antarctica, no boat had ever reached the place where the ice meets the sea. And so our mission was really to gather as much information as humanly possible about this really critical intersection between ice and ocean.
2019 was the first year in recorded human history that the ocean right in front of the glacier had melted enough to allow scientific missions to get up close.
Rush: In fact, it opened up just like a week or two before we arrived. And so we had this very unique opportunity to draw incredibly close to the glacier.
They spent a month at and around the glacier, deploying different sensory devices, collecting data and studying this frozen area of the world that no one else had ever been to.
Rush: I felt like I was in the best episode of National Geographic most of the time.
Elizabeth interviewed everyone on board ice breaker, several times, and helped with basic scientific projects.
Rush: We had a couple days where we had to get on little zodiac boats and motor over to some remote island chains where our task was to stick epoxy-like transmission devices to the foreheads of elephant seals and the males are like two and three tons and they look sort of like gigantic puffed, oversized, gigantic cows. They bark and they were just sort of like really funny creatures… We saw humpback whales breaching and flying out of the air and twisting all around. And there's lots of really interesting seabirds that live or migrate to Antarctica.
And though it is harsh and bone-chilling up top, little do many people know that hiding beneath Antarctica's icy surface is a kind of technicolor universe.
Rush: People tend to think of Antarctica as a pretty barren place, but I think some of the most exciting things are happening in the ocean around Antarctica. So you have all of this krill, and then you have all of these whales that travel down to Antarctica to eat the krill. So we were there during summer and yeah, the underside of the ice has like all different shades to it because of the krill's pink and reds and orange and that's the bottom of the food chain for all of these larger marine mammals.
Elizabeth got to know this landscape, a small part of it anyway, and what she experienced left a lasting impression.
Rush: One of my favorite days we deployed to a few remote island chains and our task was to basically beach comb and look for ancient penguin bones. Although it was about negative 20 Celsius and it was freezing. We were in multiple layers of clothing. We got to spend a whole day on this island where we were amongst the only humans to have ever touched it in the history of the planet.
She then spent the next five years turning that experience into a book – called ‘The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth’ - about the journey, the science, what she learned about herself, climate change, and how we live and act in the face of it all. Because even though we often think of Antarctica as being ‘at the end’ or ‘the edge’ of the Earth – far away and peripheral – in climate terms, it’s less like an edge, and more like an engine. What we do there matters everywhere.
Rush: People say Antarctica is like the piston in the pump that drives ocean circulation currents. It determines weather all over the world. So even though we're very far away from Antarctica every day, some part of your life is absolutely touched by the continent, shaped by the continent.
For a long time, the only people venturing to Antarctica were explorers, researchers and scientists aboard data-gathering missions like the one Elizabeth joined. And the stories they brought back were the closest ordinary folk could get to this place. But in the past several decades, that has started to change. More and more people are travelling to the world's most remote continent as tourists, lured by the prospect of a wild, unique, fast-disappearing experience.
At the beginning of the year, the luxury American travel magazine ‘Condé Nast’ published its annual list of the ‘best places to go in 2025’. For the first time, Antarctica made that list. And there's a reason it's marketed to wealthy travelers looking for a luxury experience. Visiting Antarctica as a tourist on a cruise or expedition will set you back between $15,000-80,000 USD. And that doesn't even include getting to the departure points — which are located in southern South America, South Africa, Tasmania and New Zealand.
These days tour operators are also increasingly offering 'fast-tracked' trips, where you can skip sailing through the infamously rocky Drake Passage and complete a trip in as few as 6-8 days. They're also offering new expeditions to 'previously unexplored areas' of Antarctica.
Ellie Leane: I view it with some concern.
That's Ellie Leane. She's a professor of Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania. That’s the little island at the bottom of Australia, closer than most to Antarctica. Ellie's written several books about the continent, and she recently co-authored a study about overtourism in Antarctica… She's talking about concern for the uptick in visitors.
Leane: Maybe that's a little bit hypocritical from someone who's been to Antarctica multiple times.
Ellie's been to Antarctica four times now. And each time it's given her a greater appreciation of the majesty, the preciousness and the huge importance of life on Earth. So why the concern?
Leane: It's not that I think tourism shouldn't exist. I just worry about the skyrocketing numbers, it is increasing exponentially. And at the moment, there's nothing to stop it doing so indefinitely.
Antarctica is governed by a coalition of nations that have signed what's called the 'Antarctic Treaty'. So, that's 58 nations in total - but only 29 have decision-making rights. The peak body that manages tourism there is called the 'International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators' or IAATO for short.
Leane: And IAATO does a lot of good. It puts in a lot of rules and guidelines for what operators can and can't do.
Visits are highly regulated by IAATO, in particular to protect the biosecurity of Antarctica. Tourists are only permitted to step foot in certain zones of land, they must thoroughly clean their clothing before arriving to prevent the spread of non-native pests, and they must keep at least five meters, or 15 feet, from. Cruise ships are also only permitted to use approved lighter-grade marine fuels because of the Antarctic heavy fuel oil ban.
Leane: You'll probably be surprised at just how careful you have to be at what you do. can't sit on the snow, can't kneel on the snow, you can't put your backpack on the snow…
Those are all important things, Ellie says, but they’re still not enough.
Leane: One thing IAATO can't do as an industry body is put a cap on numbers. So that has to come from somewhere else and inevitably would have to come from the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties. But there's 29 decision making parties there and they're all different nations and they all have different views on tourism and trying to get them to cut numbers is going to be quite the challenge. There's a lot of discussion about tourism going on at the moment in the meetings, but it's not moving very quickly. We're going to have to have some fairly serious conversations about how many people can go to Antarctica without really putting the environment at major risk
Antarctica's harsh, frozen environment might not be ‘fragile’ so to speak, but it is vulnerable to the impacts of tourism. The more humans visit, the higher the risk that diseases and invasive species will come too. Humans also bring more pollution. Not necessarily in their backpacks - that is definitely not allowed - but via the exhaust pipes of the cruise ships and ship vessels they arrive on. In the most popular areas for research and tourism, scientists have found a higher concentration of black carbon on the ice. This effectively turns the ice from white to black, reducing its reflective quality and accelerating melting.
Then there are the outpouring of emissions required to get there... Travelling to Antarctica is emissions intensive. It’s the farthest most people will travel in their lifetimes. Tourists have to take long flights and long cruises in extreme conditions to reach it. That contributes to the climate change that is already causing profound damage to Antarctica. One study published in Nature Communications found that each visitor between 2016 and 2020 was essentially responsible for melting 83 tons of snow each. The researchers and the scientists that travel here are implicated too. Though you could argue their contributions to climate science offset their emissions to some extent...
Leane: Inevitably there's an impact. There's an impact if you go as a scientist, there's an impact if you go as a tourist. So you have to justify that to yourself if you can.
On February 25, 2025 Antarctic sea ice reached its minimum extent for the year. And for the seventh year in a row, it was the smallest its ever been in human history. The continent is melting. That has enormous implications for human life and wildlife far and wide.
Antarctica is a home for millions of animals.
Leane: you'll see all kinds of different penguins, chinstraps, gentus, occasionally an emperor if you're really lucky, whales, humpback whales, a lot of whales, as well as the seals. If you go to somewhere like South Georgia, you'll see fur seals, for example, and all kinds of bird life.
It effectively functions like a giant mirror for the planet, reflecting the sun's light and heat — crucial for maintaining a stable, habitable global climate. As it melts, global sea levels rise. Since 1880, they've already risen by about 8-10 inches, or 20-25 centimeters — that’s threatening low-lying pacific island nations, such as Tuvalu, Fiji and the Maldives. Scientists say coastal communities, such as those along the US East Coast and Gulf Coast - already suffering from worsening storm surges and high-tide flooding - are right in the firing line of sea level rise due to ice melt.
In a kind of perverse way, this melting is actually making it easier to visit Antarctica – increasing accessibility and extending the summer.
Of all of these impacts, the emissions driving global warming are the biggest threat to this continent. And, yes, those emissions aren't just produced by people travelling to Antarctica each year… they come from all plane travel all over the world, and mostly from burning coal, oil and gas for energy. That means, as Ellie Leane points out, many of us are guilty. It's just that Antarctica is particularly far away, inevitably requiring more carbon emissions to reach.
And... many people also see Antarctica as simply different — a place of such planetary importance and precious wilderness, so key to a stable climate; it's worthy of special protection.
Leane: I think we're beginning to see that it's a lot more important to our livelihoods than we ever realised. You know, Antarctica is going to be the biggest source of sea level rise down the track, of anything. And I think we're beginning to realise that, you know, we ignore that at our peril.
This is why tourism to Antarctica is often categorized as ‘last chance tourism’. That’s the idea that you visit a place before it’s wrecked or disappears entirely. While it’s still ‘intact’. This category also includes coral reefs before they’re bleached beyond recognition, glaciers before they melt away, and even seeing polar bears in the wild before their habitats disappear.
Leane: So, there’s two different things there, isn’t there. ‘I want to see it before climate change changes it irrevocably’. And ‘I want to see it before tourism changes it irrevocably’. Both ironic because by going you’re adding to the problem by going.
But Ellie, who's researched tourist motivations for visiting Antarctica, says, for most people, she doesn't think that's the main one.
Leane: For me, it wasn’t a huge motivation for most people. I think that's maybe a little bit overblown in the case of Antarctic tourism.
A lot of people are going for the wildlife and the scenery as you might expect. Some of them really like the idea of it being a place on the edge as I do. They have a sense of adventure and they feel like going there is sort of an adventurous thing to do. You do get some people who you might call sort of bucket listers who - they've been to every continent, and they want to go to their seventh, which for me is not a great reason to go anywhere, collecting continents like that. But not too many people like that. For a number of people, it's really a trip of a lifetime. They've saved up a long time to be able to afford it because for some reason or another, they've always been intrigued by Antarctica.
A lot of tourism to Antarctica is curated with a strong educational element, Ellie says. On board many cruises, there are daily lectures on penguins, and the continent's unique history and ecology.
It’s part of a broader aim – even a justification – for allowing tourism to such a place despite environmental concerns. In fact, the authority that regulates Antarctic tourism, IAATO, states on its website that it hopes to foster 'Antarctic ambassadors' through tourism — people who return from their visits inspired to protect the region. But research on whether that actually happens has produced pretty lukewarm results.
Leane: In the literature, there's not a lot of evidence for it. And what evidence there is, is that it drops off pretty quickly after a few months.
If and how a trip to Antarctica might spark lasting advocacy is something Ellie and her team at the University of Tasmania have been investigating.
Leane: And what we've found… is that you can't just expect ambassadorship to happen. You can't just send a lot of people to Antarctica, even if you give them lectures and so forth, which is usually the case, and expect they'll come back suddenly knowing, knowing what to do to protect it. You need to give people some really clear actions that they can take. You need to make sure that they're informed and they know what they're talking about. You need to support them to take that action, to communicate in appropriate ways.
In other words, the concept of Antarctic ambassadorship may sound promising, but right now, it’s more of a marketing slogan than a path to meaningful stewardship. That doesn’t mean it has no potential, Ellie thinks, but if tourists have any hope of becoming real stewards for Antarctica, what that actually means needs to be clearer, and the ask probably needs to be bigger. Because taking home “pro-environmental behaviour” is one thing, but actual ambassadorship? That might mean getting involved in Antarctic politics.
Leane: The main thing is to be a little bit more conscious of the geopolitics and to be aware of when Antarctica is discussed in the media and to be aware of what their country is doing and its position on various policy issues being discussed in the treaty meeting, and making a bit of noise about that and getting online and encouraging other people to think about it.
So, if ambassadors were able to help shape more respectful, sustainable tourism in Antarctica – what would that actually look like?
Leane: I feel like tourism in Antarctica's got to be about Antarctica. It can't be tourism done with Antarctica as a glamorous, adventurous backdrop. It's got to be tourism that really does its best to connect people to that place, make them appreciate that place and make them appreciate how endangered it is. And that can only be a finite amount of people every season.
In practice, that would mean continuing strict biosecurity measures and focusing tours on environmental education; capping visitor numbers, limiting what activities are allowed - Ellie says kayaking, yes, base-jumping, no - and introducing something new: a tourist tax.
Leane: Oh one other thing I think we should do is tax people and have them pay, you know, a certain fee that could go to monitoring in Antarctica and, and monitoring the checks on the wildlife and checks on the impact of the industry, for example. And perhaps some of that fee could go towards supporting students or people that can't afford to go to Antarctica to experience it. That would make the industry, that would sort of give back to Antarctica to some extent.
For Elizabeth Rush, who spent two whole months voyaging to and from Antarctica aboard an icebreaker, there is something precious worth preserving in the remoteness of this continent.
Rush: 200 years ago, no one had ever been there before. Like there's something really phenomenally powerful about the ice and how it held humans at arm's length for most of our history. And I would love to see us honor that.
She’s also cautious not to lose sight of the contradictions inherent in travelling such a vast distance to a vulnerable ecosystem in the name of protecting it. And how it might distract us from other environmental work to be done closer to home.
Rush: When we think about what it means to become an ambassador to the ice, I think it's also important to remember that this is actually a place that has pretty decent laws protecting it already. It might be more useful to become an ambassador to a landscape that's in your backyard that isn't as equally protected.
When Elizabeth did eventually depart Antarctica years ago, she was struck by the simplicity of the lessons she was taking back with her.
Rush: I remember the feeling of crossing back over the Southern Ocean and the Drake's Passage and kind of feeling Antarctica recede behind me. I knew that I would never come back.
I would say it didn't fundamentally shift how I saw climate change. It did teach me something about what it meant to live with a couple dozen other people and have to really work hard to achieve a set of shared goals… like if we're going to survive a world that's falling apart, we have to learn to do it together and that that's the way one might be able to continue forward in this time of great loss.
Not just awe, not just urgency, but how to work together.
This episode of Living Planet was produced by me, Charli Shield. It was edited and mixed by Neil King. Our sound engineer was Ziad Abou Sleiman. What did you think of this episode? We’d love to hear your thoughts – send an email or voicenote to us at livingplanet@dw.com. And if there are any climate or environmental issues you want us to cover, or if you have specific questions you want us to try to find the answers to, send those in too. If you’re listening to this on the radio, remember you can find and subscribe to Living Planet on any podcast platform – which is also where you can leave us a rating and review if you’re feeling extra nice. Thanks for listening.