The years have taken their toll on Faraday, which dates from the mid-1950s. The BAS decided that it would be too expensive to upgrade the base in line with British health and safety rules, so in 1993 Foreign Office ministers began to look for a suitable country to take it over. If Britain had failed to find a taker, the BAS would have had to close the base in 1996.

Under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty’s Environmental Protocol, the entire station would have had to be physically removed and disposed of outside Antarctica. This would have increased the cost of shutting down the station to at least £1 million. The BAS would also have had to set up an automated system to collect data on the oceans and atmosphere for worldwide monitoring programmes.

After initial interest from South Korea fizzled out, Ukraine came into the picture. Ukrainian scientists accounted for around 20 per cent of the former Soviet Union’s extensive research programme in Antarctica. But Ukraine failed to reach an agreement with Russia on taking over one of the former Soviet stations.

The deal with Britain will have advantages for both countries. Britain will avoid the logistical problems and cost of closing the station, while Ukraine will acquire an established station in good working order, complete with fixtures and fittings, some scientific instruments, electricity generator and waste-processing equipment.

In return, Ukraine has promised to rebuild Faraday’s fuel store so that it complies with the Environmental Protocol, and has agreed to continue monitoring meteorological conditions, sea levels, stratospheric ozone and the state of the ionosphere. Ukraine will pass these data to the BAS for at least 10 years. “We were concerned about closing Faraday because it feeds information into world databases,” says Barry Heywood, director of the BAS. “We needed someone who would continue that work, and with the Ukrainians there will be no diminution in what Faraday contributes.” The transfer will be complete by February 1996.

The arrangement is very satisfactory, says Frank Curry, head of administration and planning at the BAS. “They have the knowledge and the ability to run the station properly. In fact, they have many people who have spent most of their lives in Antarctic research.” Ukraine has become an adherent state of the Antarctic Treaty, it has signed the Environmental Protocol and has joined the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Britain is also scaling down its operation at Signy in the South Orkneys. Like Faraday, Signy is more than 40 years old and would have been expensive to modernise. The old buildings, which housed up to 30 scientists in summer and around 15 in winter, are being removed and replaced by a state-of-the-art building that will provide accommodation and laboratory facilities for eight people during the summer months only.

Another problem at Signy is the booming population of fur seals. The animals were once hunted almost to extinction, and in 1965 there were practically none on Signy Island. But in February this year researchers counted 22 000 on the island, which measures just 6.5 by 5 kilometres. The population explosion has devastated the coastal vegetation, which cannot survive the constant outpouring of urine and faeces.

The seals also pose a hazard to researchers. “Virtually all of the animals are immature bulls,” says Ron Lewis-Smith, who has been monitoring the fur seals for 30 years. “It can be quite traumatic doing field work, walking to one’s research site, or trying to go ashore from a boat when there are several hundred seals on a small beach.”

Signy’s research programme in terrestrial biology will continue, but the marine work is being moved to Rothera Station, on Adelaide Island, where a £4.5 million building programme is under way, including accommodation for 40 people and a rock airstrip.

Despite the transfer of Faraday to Ukraine and the scaling down of Signy, Britain is not cutting its research in Antarctica, says Heywood.

More scientists, both from the BAS and universities, will be able to work at Rothera, and thanks to the runway they will have access to more of the continent. “Moving the marine programme to Rothera will provide the opportunity to test theories developed at Signy in another area of Antarctica,” he says. A further advantage of leaving Faraday is that the BAS’s research ship will no longer have to supply the station, leaving it free to carry out more research in deep waters.

As expedition leader of the Ocean Princess, I already knew that the
company chartering the Northern Ranger was not a member of the International
Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, despite being invited to join.
IAATO was established about two years ago to encourage responsible, environmentally
friendly tourism in Antarctica. All the main cruise operators now belong
to IAATO, and agree to abide by a comprehensive code of conduct. They also
keep in contact with each other, to avoid unexpected encounters. This is
now quite necessary, because no operator wants to be in the same place as
another at the same time – which might well happen, with nine or ten ships
operating in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula.

I contacted Northern Ranger on my walkie-talkie to find out its plans
for the next day, and discovered that we both intended to visit Half Moon
Island. This beautiful, small island in the South Shetlands has a bustling
rookery of chinstrap penguins – but it’s no place for two ships to land
passengers at the same time. Fortunately, we were able to rearrange our
schedules.

I later learnt that Northern Ranger had no proper radio officer aboard
(its crew did not even know its fax number) and no one on board had ever
visited Antarctica before, except for one man who acted as an adviser on
the company’s first cruise. Perhaps that was why the company had not joined
IAATO, as the association’s guidelines insist that cruise ships hire experienced
officers and staff. Indeed, IAATO recommends that at least 75 per cent of
the lecturers and other expedition staff have previous Antarctic experience.

There are other, perhaps more disturbing, examples of unprepared ships
showing up in Antarctic waters. A couple of years ago while in Argentina
I was walking along the dock at Ushuaia, in the Beagle Channel, with the
two Swedish ice masters from the ship I was on. We encountered the worried-looking
captain of a small Russian research vessel, the Akademik Boris Petrov, chartered
by a French company.

‘How high are the waves in Antarctica?’ asked the Russian. ‘And are
the icebergs very big?’ We did our best to answer his questions, but then
came the clincher. ‘Do you have any charts that you could lend me?’ It seemed
that all he had was one large map showing the whole of Antarctica. Concerned
for the safety of this dodgy-sounding enterprise, the ice masters photocopied
a selection of charts to help him out.

We learnt that besides having no proper charts, the Boris Petrov planned
to visit a series of officially designated Sites of Special Scientific
Interest (SSSIs). These were certainly off-limits under both Russian and
French law, as both countries are party to the Antarctic Treaty. We advised
the captain about this. As we walked away we saw a Russian crew member testing
an outboard engine on the dock. It was a water-cooled engine. The engine
seized up within about 15 seconds and was probably a total write-off.

Other Antarctic visitors include conventional cruise ships that occasionally
divert from itineraries around South America to make brief forays among
the icebergs. Some details have emerged about a visit last year by the German
ship Europa, thanks to the presence of the British ice-patrol ship Endurance.
Apparently, Europa landed between 300 and 400 passengers at Deception Island,
where they walked all over an SSSI at Whalers Bay. It seems probable that
most of these people were Germans – or citizens of other Antarctic Treaty
nations – and as such, would be breaking their own countries’ laws. And
the German-flagged Europa had no business landing them there anyway.

Last season, a multinational team (British, Italian and Korean) on board
Endurance inspected three tourist vessels, the Europa, the Explorer and
the Akademik Sergey Vavilov. The last two were operated by IAATO member
companies and were found to conform well to Antarctic Treaty standards for
navigational safety and environmental protection. The report on Europa has
not yet been made public and is wending its way through diplomatic channels.
Full details will not be known until the next Antarctic Treaty meeting in
April 1994.

It seems that Europa is not visiting Antarctica this season, but a similar
ship, Cunard’s Sagafjord, intends to take some 400 or so passengers there
on a South American cruise. However, after seeking advice, Cunard has apparently
decided against landing passengers.

Most Antarctic tourism is well managed and responsible, especially the
cruises operated by IAATO members. These ships observe guidelines that
are more comprehensive and go well beyond any national legislation that
I know of. Indeed, the British Antarctic Survey has given its approval to
IAATO operations by refusing to entertain requests for tourist visits to
its stations except from IAATO member companies.

Bernard Stonehouse, of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge,
is one of the world’s most respected penguin biologists and has already
spent two seasons studying the impact of tourism on penguins. It will take
some years for results to come in, but he says he has seen nothing so far
that causes him concern. He also points out that the average penguin colony
is a very crowded and stressful place, and he doubts that tourists visiting
around the edge of the colony would cause any significant extra stress.

Some critics, such as Bruce Mannheim, an American lawyer, question the
effect of ‘repeated, frequent and uncoordinated visits’ (This Week, 17 July).
In fact, among IAATO members the overwhelming majority of visits are coordinated.
To my mind, there is no evidence that repetitive or frequent visits are
necessarily harmful in themselves.

In the Galapagos Islands, another wilderness ecosystem inhabited by
sea birds and seals, sea lions and other pinnipeds, many tourists visit
the breeding colonies every day of the year. I don’t know of any significant
adverse effects, although erosion is beginning to be a problem in some places,
since all the tourists are obliged to keep to the same trails. In Antarctica,
this is much less of a problem because there are no trails, and because
of the generally much more robust (that is to say rocky) nature of the terrain.
In Antarctica, too, the IAATO guidelines ensure that visitors remain on
the edge of penguin rookeries, while in Galapagos some well-frequented trails
meander through the middle of seabird breeding colonies.

Robert Headland of the Scott Polar Research Institute notes that the
human impact on the region ‘may be assumed to be directly proportional to
the number of persons there and the duration of their presence’ (Annals
of Tourism Research, in the press). He compares the number of days that
tourists spent ashore in Antarctica in one year (the 1992 austral winter
and the 1992-93 austral summer) with the number of days spent by scientists
in the same period. His analysis suggests that the environmental impact
of tourism may be less than 1 per cent of the total human impact. Headland
says this ’causes one to consider how balanced some criticism of the present
level of tourism is ‘.

I believe that the only significant problems are posed by ships that
are ill-prepared and ignorant of safety and environmental requirements.
It is a pity that the full report on the Europa could not have been released
and widely publicised before the current Antarctic tourist season began
this month.

Nigel Sitwell is a former editor of Wildlife and now an expedition leader.