The annual influx of tourists visiting the Great Wall Station of China in Antarctica is disrupting scientific research being done there.
Scientists say, on the first day of the Lunar New Year alone, they had to meet and greet close to a hundred tourists that were visiting the polar station. The tourists arrived on board a cruise ship from Ushuaia, Argentina. They had been initially informed that they would not be allowed to enter the research station because staff would be busy unloading cargo from Xuelong, a Chinese ship.
Sun Youjun, CEO of tourism website easy2world.com, who accompanied the tourists on the cruise, said they were later allowed into the station and had expressed their New Year's greetings to the staff. Sun wrote on his blog at Sina Weibo that two cruise passengers knew the captain of the Xuelong and the Great Wall Station head.
"Tourists took great care not to damage the environment and researchers at the Great Wall Station also welcomed a lot of visiting old friends during the holiday," Sun further wrote. During antarctic summers, thousands of tourists, including an increasing number of Chinese, often make their expedition to the Great Wall Station, the first research base of China in Antarctica.
"Emotionally, we should warmly welcome our compatriots who have come all the way to Antarctica, but on the other hand, the research station is not a tourist spot," a staff member of the research facility lamented.
Researchers are now in a quandary as to whether they will still entertain tourists to the research station on the Fildes Peninsula on the Antarctic's St. George Island, or refuse visits altogether and just focus on their scientific research.
Despite the fact that the Antarctic is still not in China's list of tourist destinations, tourist expeditions to polar regions are catching people's interest and experts are calling for the introduction of certain regulations on polar tourism.
A State Oceanic Administration official said that the Antarctic's environment and the tourists' safety are at great risk during Antarctic trips and that government agencies have to take immediate action to regulate polar tourism.