Antarctic tourism. Cruise ship & tourists amid icebergs and glaciers. Petermann Island. Antarctica cruise

Antarctica impresses tourists with the unique beauty of wildlife and allows you to get a lot of incredible emotions and impressions of the unique opportunity to see animals and birds that are not found anywhere else. About 97% of Antarctica is ice-covered. Ice shelves cover not only the mainland of Antarctica, but also slips tongues onto the adjacent seas and islands. On the coast in ice-free areas (Antarctic oases) in the summer lakes sometimes occur. There are four poles on the Antarctic continent. In addition to the geographical South and magnetic, there is also a pole of cold and a pole of winds.

Long before the discovery of the continent, various assumptions were made about the existence of a hypothetical Southern land, in search of which the expeditions were sent, which discovered the large islands around Antarctica. The seas do not penetrate deep into the continent. The largest of them are Ross, Weddell, Bellingshausen, Amundsen, named after the researchers of Antarctica. The most powerful current in the World Ocean, the current of the Western Winds, passes around Antarctica. This cold current forms off the coast of Antarctica a large number of cyclones bringing heavy rainfall to the coast.

Contrary to popular misconception, not all the territory of Antarctica is covered with ice. For many people, Antarctica seems to be an endless icy desert, where there is nothing but snow and ice. And for the most part it is, of course, so. But in Antarctica there are quite extensive snowless valleys and even sand dunes. However, you should not be under a delusion, there is no snow there not because in these areas it is warmer than in others, on the contrary, the conditions are even more severe there. In the dry valleys of McMurdo, terrible katabatic winds blow at speeds of up to 320 km / h. They cause evaporation of moisture and therefore there is no snow or ice.

Each tour to the White Continent is still, essentially, individual. The cruise itineraries, though run from one (South American) side of the Antarctic, can be very different. Already along the way, the landing sites of tourists often change due to the weather. Finally, even the same islands and parts of the ocean, depending on weather conditions, with an interval of a week may look different. The duration of the cruises ranges from two days (for those who need only check in the most exotic place in the world) to three weeks (sounds like a dream, but the cost of such a trip is comparable to the price of a decent car). The size of the group depends on the ship: small ships take a dozen or two tourists, the tour turns out to be exclusive, but the living conditions on such a ship are usually Spartan. besides, to go on a small ship through the Drake Strait is just scary. Large cruise liners are even worse - groups of over one hundred tourists in the Antarctic are forbidden to disembark, therefore familiarity with the continent from the deck of a luxury ship is inferior, only visual.

Travelers usually spend the night aboard expeditionary or cruise ships, and there are few brave souls who go ashore to camp and sleep in sleeping bags surrounded by snow and the snoring of seals and sea leopards in the neighborhood. Virtually the entire territory of Antarctica is a cold Antarctic desert. The animal world of Antarctica is poor and entirely connected with the ocean. Crustaceans, wingless insects, some species of birds live here. The geometric center of the continent, called the Pole of relative inaccessibility, is located at 84 degrees south latitude, in relative proximity to the South Pole.

In the Antarctic, there is a rule that all expeditionary and tourist ships adhere to: no more than 100 people should go to the ground at the same time in one place so as not to disturb the local ecosystem. There is another rule: there should not be more than one ship near one place. There is the Antarctic Journal, in which travel companies book their time and place to visit certain places on the Antarctic continent.

The largest known asteroid crater is located in Antarctica. This crater is located in the region of the Land of Ulkis and has a crater diameter of about 482 km. According to scientists, it was formed about 250 million years ago in the Permian-Triassic period as a result of an asteroid falling to Earth at least 48 kilometers across. The dust raised during the fall and explosion of the asteroid led to a centuries-old cooling and, according to one of the hypotheses, the death of most of the flora and fauna of that era.

Tourism in Antarctica is booming. If 10-15 years ago the number of tourists from all over the world was measured by several thousand a year, now it exceeds fifty thousand. At the same time, trips to the White Continent have not yet been put on stream, and, apparently, will not be for a long time - due to organizational difficulties, unpredictable weather conditions, the strictest environmental requirements, and also the high cost of tours. In addition, here is a short season - only summer, from December to February, the rest of the time Antarctica is icebound.

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest accumulation of ice on our planet. It covers 98% of the ice of Antarctica, which contains 61% of all fresh water on Earth. Recently, researchers found the deepest point on land under the Denman Glacier - an ice-filled canyon that extends 3.5 km below sea level. It is eight times lower than the other lowest point on the globe - the Dead Sea. The existence of a huge canyon in Antarctica became known back in 2016. During the study, an international group of geologists studied satellite images, and then used the georadar method. As the experts found out, the canyon is about a thousand kilometers long, but at the time of discovery they suspected that in some places the depth did not exceed one kilometer. Then no one imagined that the largest canyon in the world would be the lowest point in the world.

Global warming is a side process of the existence of man on this planet, which began with the industrial revolution. Usually, global warming refers to processes that cause human actions on the planet (burning fossil fuels, forcing the greenhouse effect, melting glaciers and, as a result, raising the temperature on planet Earth), leading to a general increase in temperature. But do not forget that the Earth from time to time experienced global warming in its history and without the participation of man - it seems that this is a completely natural process that we cause by its unnatural actions. Particular attention is paid to the fight against global warming on the agenda of the world, and if we do not want our blue planet to turn into Venus, useless for life, humanity needs to change the course of the global party.

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