Antarctica travel. Iceberg with penguins looks like swimming pool. Antarctic tourism

Almost all tourists get to Antarctica on cruise ships - mainly on small ships for expedition cruises. During your trip to Antarctica, you will have the opportunity to see many rare and endemic animals, including whales (minke whale, humpback whale, killer whale, fin whale), seals (leopard seal, crabeater seal, Weddell seal, southern elephant seal, southern fur seal), penguins Chinstrap, Gent and Adele, many species of sea birds. If you are experienced and brave enough, you can try diving and kayaking. You are waiting for impressions that are inaccessible to most people of the planet Earth.

Journey to the edge of the world. The discovery of Antarctica as an ice continent took place thanks to the Russian round-the-world naval expedition under the leadership of F. F. Bellingshausen and M. P. Lazarev on the sloops Vostok and Mirny. Now in the Antarctic there are 37 scientific stations. Antarctica provides for freedom of scientific research and encourages international cooperation to ensure the use of Antarctica for the benefit of all mankind.

The main impression of the trip, which all the tourists say, is that in Antarctica you expect to admire the majestic, but dead kingdom of ice. And you see a land full of sparkling life - birds, penguins, seals, whales everywhere. And even the huge, crystal, icebergs shimmering with paints also seem almost alive. Over the past decades, humanity has been trying to master Antarctica. After the adoption of the Antarctic Treaty of 1961, human activities on this continent began to be regulated by the rule of law, as scientists began to worry that the presence of people could adversely affect the Antarctic environment.

Life in Antarctica is concentrated only in the adjacent islands and along a strip of coast. On the whole continent there is not a single permanent "inhabitant", apart from microorganisms - both birds and sea animals arrive here only in a certain season, as a rule, in summer. At this time of year, the ice-free Antarctic waters are teeming with krill - small crustaceans, without which the entire large fauna of the southern oceans could not exist. A little further into the mainland - a solid desert. In the vast ice space of 3-4 thousand kilometers across you can find only polar stations and colonies of emperor penguins.

This is one of the most cute animals on the planet, for which it is particularly interesting to observe in their natural habitat. They are funny walking along the paths to the seashore, where they bravely dive into cold waters. Penguins can dive to a depth of 20 meters and stay under water for 10 minutes. In Latin "thick" is pinguis, hence the penguins. Life on the mainland exists only in the coastal strip, on the islands of the sub-Antarctic belt and in the Antarctic oases, which occupy about 2% of the mainland.

Taking into account the usual frosts for the Antarctic to minus 50-60 degrees and strong storm winds, the ocean water for penguins is like a hot shower for a person: it cannot be colder than zero degrees. The plumage of penguins is different from that of other birds: feathers are small, hard, dense, similar to scales, under the skin of penguins fat accumulates. Penguins can't fly, but they swim very well, which helps them get food in the ocean. Penguins live in large groups. During snowstorms, they become warm becoming close to each other and constantly moving from the edge to the center.

Over the past 25 years, Antarctica has lost more than 3 trillion tons of ice. At the same time, ice loss over the past 5 years has increased dramatically. Antarctic icebergs can be the size of a whole city. And that's putting it mildly. Just imagine: the largest iceberg that broke away here (of course, of those that managed to be registered), was 295 kilometers long and 37 wide. Once again: 295 kilometers! Although the concepts "penguin" and Antarctica seem to be one, in fact, of the 17 species of penguins, only 4 live directly in Antarctica, the rest are also found on the shores of the ocean in the southern hemisphere, but to the north.

The most interesting penguins in all respects are imperial, reaching 1.3 meters in height and having bright golden plumage around the neck. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to see these beauties during an ordinary cruise on the Antarctic - they spend almost all the time in the ocean, and multiply, forming colonies far inland, where only polar explorers can see them. The second largest species of penguins - royal (very similar to the imperial, but not so large - up to 0.9 meters) - live far from Antarctica, on islands off the coast of South America.

Due to global warming, glaciers melt very quickly, however, it is still very difficult to understand the extent of ice loss and the degree of impact of meltwater on world ocean levels. Melting is accelerating every year, so people should take steps to eliminate the consequences. Melt water has already become the cause of a marked increase in the level of the world's oceans. According to scientists, for half a century the level has risen by as much as 27 millimeters, and this process is accelerating every year. Climate change Earth has experienced before. The planet has gone through countless temperature fluctuations over its 4.6 billion-year history, from snowball to scorching tropical heat.

In a warmer world, snow and ice will melt, exposing the dark earth, which will absorb solar heat and not reflect it. More water will evaporate from the surface, and this additional greenhouse gas in the form of water vapor will retain even more heat. Oceans slow down climate change as they dissolve carbon dioxide from the air. But warmer oceans will be able to retain less carbon dioxide, which means it will remain in the atmosphere more. These consequences are relatively well understood, but others are more difficult to track: for example, how changes in cloud cover will affect the climate or what will happen when methane takes off, locked in permafrost at the poles. Climate models can only make predictions based on what we know, so if temperatures rise above people's expectations, their forecasts will be less reliable.

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