Half Moon Island (Antarctica) (AFP)
No palm trees or fine sand ... Half-naked bodies plunge into icy water in front of anxious penguins: horizon long out of reach, the Antarctic has become a playground for tourists, at the risk of precipitating its metamorphosis .
"It's like stabbing." Troubled in his shirt, Even Carlsen, a 58-year-old Norwegian bearded man, comes out of a bath of just 3 ° C on Half Moon Island, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Around, blocks of ice-shaped paper casserole, origami or even amphitheater float, photogenic, on a sea of oil. On the shore, a medical team is watching.
Riding on the thirst for novelty of a wealthy clientele and seized with a sense of urgency to discover countries threatened by climate disruption, cruises venture into ever more remote and wild corners.
Continent of all superlatives - the coldest, the windiest, the driest, the most remote, the most deserted, the most inhospitable ...- Antarctica, at once sterile and bubbling with life, is today a destination of choice.
For many, it's the last frontier. A border that must be reached at all costs before it disappears in its present form.
"It's not a typical beach, but it's great," enthuses Even Carlsen after his "polar dive" under the 62nd parallel south.
The daring Scandinavian is one of the 430 passengers on the Roald Amundsen, the world's first hybrid-powered cruise ship, to cruise into the Southern Ocean only a few months after leaving the shipyards.
An AFP team was on board, invited along with other journalists by Hurtigruten, the company owning the boat.
- "Heart of the Earth" -
Antarctica, "it's like the heart of the Earth", poetically depicts the director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute, Marcelo Leppe.
"Every year, it changes size: from 14 million square kilometers to more than 20 million, it grows in winter with sea ice and shrinks in the summer, it feels like it's beating."
If the Antarctic Treaty, signed 60 years ago, made it a land dedicated to peace and science, tourism has also developed. Especially from the 1990s when the Cold War ended, the Soviet icebreakers found a new use.
The only economic activity alongside fishing - an object of an international tug of war around the creation of marine sanctuaries - is that it concentrates mainly on the peninsula with easier access and a milder climate than the rest. from the continent.
On this tongue of land that escapes from the polar circle to stretch to South America, we come to observe a fauna that we usually see only in zoos, documentaries or movies. animation.
Stunning ice landscapes too, where white turns pastel colors when dawn and dusk come. Hills dug furrows like meringues, crowns waving like whipped cream ...
"Purity, grandeur, excessiveness," marvels Hélène Brunet, a 63-year-old French retiree. "It's amazing, totally incredible, it's a pleasure to be there ... Little dust ..."
Not a rubbish in sight. But behind this clarity, stigmatize the stigmas of human activities.
Charged by ocean currents, micro-plastics are invisible but ubiquitous. In water, snow, ice ... Even in penguin eggs, according to a study published in October in the journal Nature.
There is also this black carbon spewed by the chimneys of scientific and tourist ships passing through.
A soot that settles on icy and snowy surfaces, darkens them and increases their ability to absorb heat, ultimately accelerating their melting.
"People who go there to observe and protect nature endanger the area they leave less immaculate than they found," said Sönke Diesener, head of the German environmental NGO Nabu.
- Hot blow -
According to scientists, Antarctica plays a major role in the global climate.
The powerful circumpolar current, which travels the Southern Ocean from west to east, acts as a transmission belt that bursts the waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, absorbing warm currents and redistributing cold waters.
Rich in phytoplankton, these microalgae that develop by absorbing CO2, the Southern Ocean is also the largest carbon sink on the planet.
By long-term imprisonment of large amounts of greenhouse gases, it contributes, according to scientists, to significantly curb global warming.
But "the heart of the Earth", as well as the waters around it, is itself a victim of a heat stroke with consequences still difficult to measure.
The peninsula, in particular, is one of the fastest warming areas. Almost 3 ° C over the last 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), three times more than the global average.
In March 2015, an Argentinean research station even raised 17.5 ° C. Never seen.
"Every year we can see the glaciers melt, the sea ice disappear and, in the ice-free areas, the recolonization of plants and other organisms that were not present in the Antarctic before," said Mr. Leppe .
- Tourism in full swing -
About 78,500 people are expected to visit the continent between November and March, according to the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO).
A leap of 40% compared to the previous season due in part to the flash passage in the region of some new ships carrying more than 500 passengers and therefore unable to land, according to the rules defined by IAATO.
"Some would say that 80,000 people, it does not even fill a national stadium and it's not much compared to the 275,000 people who visit the Galapagos every year," said the spokesperson of the association, Amanda Lynnes.
"It's a long way off, but Antarctica is still a special place to be managed as such," she says.
In these pristine lands, fashion is intimate cruises, called expedition, which break with the gigantism of mass cruises, lambasted for their polluting and invasive side.
On their ships smaller than the mastodons sailing in the tropics and, above all, cleaner - heavy fuel oil has been banned in Antarctica since 2011 - companies say they raise awareness of environmental issues as a selling point. Which sometimes earns them eco-bleaching charges.
On board the Roald Amundsen, there is no dance floor or casino, but microscopes and participatory experiences.
And popular lectures on whales, great explorers, Darwin ... but strangely on the warming, evoked only in dotted lines.
"Because it's quite controversial," says Verena Meraldi, chief scientist at Hurtigruten. "Several times we had conferences specifically dedicated to climate change but it creates conflicts".
- Space for "explorers" -
The lexicon has been skillfully reworked. We no longer speak of "passenger" but of "guest" or "cruise ship" but "explorer".
Generally older "explorers", often retirees who have traveled a lot and who are now distributed walking sticks to clear the sixth continent. "My 107th country", slips a Danish man down.
Pampered "guests" who, on the Roald Amundsen, have the choice between three restaurants, from street food to the most select table. The glorious Norwegian adventurer who gave his name to the boat, he had to eat his sled dogs to conquer the South Pole in 1911.
"Explorers", finally, with a certain standard, able to pay 7.000 euros each for a cruise of 18 days in an entry-level cabin. And up to 25,000 euros for the suite with private terrace and jacuzzi.
Some companies rely heavily on ultra-luxury with James Bond ships taking helicopters and submarines, suites of more than 200 square meters and butler services.
With a seaplane as a bonus, the SeaDream Innovation mega-yacht will perform 88-day "pole-to-pole" cruises starting in 2021. The two most expensive suites, at 135,000 euros per person, are already booked.
- Meeting of two worlds -
So much modernity and comfort contrast with the primitive character of wild immensity.
Indifferent to the bipeds wrapped in their fluorescent windbreakers and whitewashed index 50 sun cream, life abounds in this austral spring, in a deafening silence.
Penguins as clumsy on the ground as they are in the water, humpback whales heavy but majestic, sea lions and apathetic seals that are basking in the sun ...
On Half Moon Island, chinstrap penguins - so called because of the black line that runs through their chin - ride mechanics in this period of mating, trumpeting the beak in the air from the top of their nests of pebbles.
"It's to mean to the other males that it's their space and also, maybe, it's their female," says ornithologist Rebecca Hodgkiss.
They put the heart to work, the colony of 2,500 palmipeds melts like snow in the sun. Decline due to the man or simple move? Nobody knows.
- Redesigned coastlines -
We know, however, that the future of millions of people and other species living in coastal areas thousands of miles away from Half Moon Island largely depends on what is happening here.
Huge freezer home to the largest freshwater reserves on the planet, Antarctica is also a time bomb, according to multiple studies.
As a result of global warming, the collapse of the ice cap in the west of the continent is expected to radically reshape the world map by contributing more and more to rising sea levels.
A contribution of 50 centimeters by 2100 and far beyond, according to Anders Levermann.
"For each degree of warming, the water level will rise by 2.5 meters, not during this century but in the longer term," notes the climatologist at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research.
"Even if we respect it, the Paris Climate Agreement (which aims to limit warming to less than 2 ° C, ed) will give us at least five meters of sea elevation: Venice will be under water Hamburg will be under water, New York, Shanghai, Calcutta ... ", he enumerates.
When exactly? Hard to say, but the process seems inevitable.
Because, just as a steamer can not stop at once, the ice will continue to melt and the oceans will rise even if we stop the greenhouse gas emissions overnight. .
- Antarctica with penguins -
For tourism professionals, the upheavals in Antarctica have their source a thousand leagues away, in the activities in which man performs on the other five continents. They, they swear, practice responsible tourism.
Their motto: "The only thing we take are photos, the only thing we leave are footprints, the only thing we keep are memories."
The excursions on land are accompanied by a multitude of instructions: clean his personal belongings not to introduce invasive species, stay at a distance respectful of animals not to stress them, do not pick up anything ...
"We screwed up the rest of the planet, we're not going to screw up Antarctica anyway," observes an English passenger pulling cat's hair on the velcro of her clothes.
And yet ... Some voices question the relevance of tourism in this region.
"The continent would probably be left to penguins and researchers, but in reality, it probably will never happen," says Professor Michael Hall, a polar scientist at the University of New Zealand at Canterbury.
Because poles love tourists. Frenchman Ponant built an icebreaker liner to cross to the North Pole on the other side of the globe.
"Since appreciating something from a distance seems impossible to humans, it must be ensured that it is done with as little risk to the Antarctic environment and as little carbon footprint as possible," says Hall.
"However, when every tourist trip in Antarctica releases on average more than 5 tonnes of CO2 emissions per passenger, it is a challenge," he says.
- Cases of conscience -
Most visitors come from the Northern Hemisphere, United States and China for nearly half of them.
Even before boarding cruise ships departing from South America - the most frequent mode of transport and route - they crossed the globe by plane, helping to weaken the nature they come to admire. .
A hard case of conscience to solve ...
"I am a tourist who still feels some guilt to tell me that I flew to come here," says Francoise Lapeyre, a 58-year-old French "globetrotter".
"After that, there are also choices, there are certain trips that I will not do because I think it's a lot of footprint for not much, cross the planet to go on a beach for example" , she says.
- "Ambassadors"? -
The professionals assure to want to make visitors "ambassadors" who, after having discovered this unique place, will preach for its safeguarding.
"It's good for animal life and for the protection of Antarctica that people see how beautiful this area is because we cherish what we know and understand," says Hurtigruten boss Daniel Skjeldam. .
Mark Halvorson is conquered. "Now that I've seen this, I'm even more determined to be, as deep in my soul and in my political commitment, as environmentally friendly as possible," promises the 72-year-old Texan.
But critics denounce a form of "last chance tourism", this eagerness to visit vulnerable destinations, as elsewhere Venice or the Great Barrier Reef, as far as possible.
Veny from South Africa, Cathy and Roland James, 68 and 75 years respectively, want to be "a soul of adventurers", sensitive to ecological considerations. But they admit they have not thought about their own footprint. "Unfortunately, I'm not worried about stopping traveling," he says.
Martina and Guido Höfken, 50 and 52, also like to think outside the box. "We wanted to see this fantastic Antarctic nature before it disappeared," he says.
They paid extra to offset the CO2 generated by their flight from Germany.
Future "ambassadors of Antarctica"? "A little bit, maybe, but I do not think I'm going to change the world," he says. "The best thing would be that no one comes."
© 2019 AFP