The water is freezing, come on in - or not

STRAPPING on a scuba mask and plunging into freezing water to explore the underside of an iceberg in Antarctica may not be everyone's idea of a great summer holiday, but it is a market that is flourishing.

Cruises for up to 3000 people, scuba diving tours and ice marathons are among the activities that have helped drive up tourist numbers to the icy continent from about 20,000 in the 1999-2000 season, to a peak of 46,000 in 2007-08.

But in the same week climate change was blamed for the collapse of an ice wall damming Antarctica's endangered Wilkins ice shelf, environmentalists and world leaders raised concerns about the environmental effect of largely self-regulated tourism on the fragile landscape.

On the first day of the 32nd Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore this week, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, called for tighter controls on tourism.

"The US is concerned about the safety of the tourists and the suitability of the ships that make the journey south," she said.

Proposals put forward by the US include limiting the ships that can conduct landings to those carrying fewer than 500 passengers and mandatory rules on how many passengers may be landed at once.

The Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, who attended the opening of the conference, said he supported the US proposals. "Australia is also supporting work to review the environmental effects and impacts of tourism in this incredible natural landscape and we expect that we'll need an elevated degree of management and regulation in the future."

But environmentalists at the conference say more needs to be done. At present the members of the Antarctic Treaty put forward guidelines for tourism, but there is no single authority to enforce them. The industry is largely self-regulated by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, though membership is voluntary.

Rob Nicoll, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Initiative Manager with the World Wide Fund for Nature, said the area is not appropriate for mass tourism and he would like to see enforceable rules for tourism operators enacted.

"The concern with these larger passenger vessels is if anything untoward happened, the threat to human life and also the threat to the pristine Antarctic environment would be absolutely huge . . . you could be looking at [a scale of disaster along the lines of] another Titanic," he said.