Coping with blizzards and polar bears is part of daily life for researchers in the Arctic, but what really gets under their skin is the hordes of tourists who arrive in diesel-spouting cruise ships — even though they bring much-needed cash.
In Ny-Ã…lesund, an international research station in the remote Svalbard archipelago off northern Norway, the terms of the equation are well-known but that does not make them any easier for the scientists to crack.
”More tourists means more money but also more pollution,” says Bendik Eithun Halgunset, a research adviser for the Kings Bay company that manages the site.
On some summer days, between 2 000 and 3 000 visitors arrive here, camera equipment slung over their shoulders.
The crowds invade the tranquil town nestled between fjords and mountains where the only sound to be heard is normally that of snowmobile engines rumbling past.
It can be a little overwhelming for the 180 researchers who work in the world’s most northernmost town.
”It’s a bit surreal. All of a sudden you have 20 times as many tourists as scientists here,” says Dorothea Schulze, a German engineer at the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Each cruise ship that docks in Ny-Ã…lesund leads to a surge in carbon dioxide emissions, sending the station’s atmospheric measuring equipment into a tizzy.
In one day, the ships can release more pollution than the town’s diesel-run power station emits in one year.
”The visitors themselves don’t directly influence scientific investigations but their ships are quite polluting,” explains Marcus Schumacher, the head of the French-German research institute Avipev which conducts atmospheric studies among other things.
”This makes it harder to interpret our data,” he adds.
It is also difficult to keep an eye on the tourists, even though they are strictly confined to the town limits due to the risk of encounters with the polar bears that roam the area, drawn by the smell of seal carcasses used to feed local dogs.
And the tourists, often retirees from the United States or Europe, occasionally leave mixed feelings behind.
”It has happened that visitors have handed us apples,” Halgunset says, explaining that tourists mistakenly think the town is completely cut off from the outside world.
”Or they feed the polar foxes, or they put their hands on multimillion-dollar equipment. There’s also been some looting of old artefacts that they pick up to take back home,” he adds.
In Ny-Ã…lesund, where everyone knows everyone, no one locks their front door. Which is not always a good idea.
”We have had visitors come into our bedrooms and take pictures,” Halgunset recalls.
But the money spent by tourists is much needed, representing four to five-million kroner out of an annual operating budget of about 37-million kroner ($5,6-million).
”This makes it possible to keep the price low for scientists,” explains Schumacher.
Keen to avoid a reputation as hermits spending taxpayers’ money in secret laboratories, the scientists are eager to maintain ties with the outside world to make their work more understandable and accessible to the general public.
”One solution would be maybe to ban large ships and only accept expedition ships with fewer but more knowledge-hungry people,” says Halgunset.
”But then again the risk would be that these large ships land somewhere else on Svalbard and we wouldn’t be there to keep things under control,” he adds. – AFP
