Going overboard?

Almost two years ago to the day I was on board the ill-fated MV Explorer, halfway through an 18-day trip of a lifetime to the Antarctic Peninsular.

By this point on the trip, I'd already retraced Shackleton's trek across South Georgia, been surrounded by 50,000 rock-hopper penguins and gaggles of baby seals, chewed steak from a deck barbecue as mile-long icebergs floated serenely past, and spotted an elusive Emperor penguin trudging a lonely path across a deserted ice-floe. It was without a doubt an amazing experience.

Yet when I read the news of the MV's Explorer's untimely demise last week, these memories didn't immediately spring to mind. Instead, I recalled my growing dread throughout the trip that our presence there could cause nothing but harm to one of the world's most fragile natural environments.

For years environmentalists have been warning that if left unregulated, spiralling tourist numbers -- more than 28,000 last year alone against 6,750 in 1992-3 -- could lead to issues such as sea and coastal pollution, emissions from heavy fuel oil, littering, damage to fragile flora and fauna, and disruption of breeding patterns.

What would have happened if the Explorer had spewed fuel as it went down? Should we take what happened to the Explorer as a warning that mass commercial tourism in Antarctica is an ecological disaster waiting to happen?

On our trip in November 2005, the Explorer had just under 100 passengers and crew on board and although the voyage left many of us vowing to be better conservationists, it still felt to some of us that we were invading a place that would be better off left alone.

While the crew couldn't be faulted for their insistent messages of respect and restraint before every landing, all the passengers, aside from a handful of us backpackers who had blagged port-side cut-price tickets, had paid over £4,000 for the privilege and expected to get their money's worth.

It was difficult not to get over-excited when every time the Explorer inflatable pulled up to shore, you stepped into what felt like your own private wildlife documentary.

We were there in breeding season and in their desire to capture the moment I saw fellow passengers practically climbing into nests to photograph baby albatrosses as their mother shrieked with alarm overhead. Two keen nature lovers took it in turns to bang the back of an old whaling drum to get the penguins running back and forth to get the best possible film footage and we had to keep to our allotted time slot as there was a queue of similarly packed passenger boats waiting behind us.

Maybe the problem is that currently tourism is insufficiently self-regulated, a system considered by many to be lax at best. As tourism grows, the danger is that Antarctica becomes less like a nature reserve and more like an adventure playground. Already tour operators are extending past ship-bound trips and offering the opportunity to scuba dive, kayak, take helicopter rides and snowboard down untouched mountain-faces. According to official figures there are ships now operating with over 800 passengers and there are over 30 new landing sites being used since 2004.