Crowded beaches in Antarctica: TikTok effect fills the world of penguins with tourists

The scene is disconcerting. Three Spanish soldiers and two EL PAÍS journalists, dressed in bulky waterproof protective suits, arrive by zodiac at Pendulum Cove, a beach with fumaroles rising from an active volcano that juts out from the Antarctic Ocean and forms the remote Deception Island. Yet this hostile place, at sub-zero temperatures but with hot springs, is teeming with tourists, as if it were Benidorm on the Spanish Mediterranean. Their mobile phones record vertical videos and visitors adopt the typical poses reserved for Instagram and TikTok. Anchored off the coast is the luxury cruise ship Roald Amundsen — recently bought by a consortium of investment funds from London and New York — with some 500 passengers who have paid around $22,000 each. Behind that ship arrives another one. And then another one. Mass tourism, which is collapsing towns and cities around the world, has also reached the last pristine continent on the planet.

The biologist Antonio Quesada, head of the Spanish Polar Committee, walks on another February day among the ruins of a whaling station, built in 1911 by a Norwegian company and abandoned in 1931, after the collapse of the price of whale oil, which was once used as fuel for lighting. The desolate place is a kind of Antarctic Chernobyl. The bay is still littered with enormous whale bones. And on the beach there are the whalers’ ramshackle huts, the monumental metal blubber tanks and the remains of a cemetery with 35 graves. The United Kingdom used these empty shelters to establish a scientific base, but a volcanic eruption destroyed the facilities in 1969 and caused the researchers to flee. For all that, Deception Island is now one of the most visited enclaves in Antarctica, and it is here that the Spanish Army base Gabriel de Castilla has been located since 1989. Quesada sighs as he spots the umpteenth cruise ship.

“Tourism is a fairly recent phenomenon. Twenty years ago, fewer than 20,000 people visited Antarctica each year, but last year there were about 125,000 tourists. That may seem like a small amount for an entire continent 26 times the size of the Iberian Peninsula, but most tourists come to the same places,” says Quesada, while behind him a line of ghostly figures walks under the snow of the whaling station that was devastated by the volcano. The tourists are surprised by the presence of Spanish soldiers and scientists, housed during the Antarctic summer on the other side of the bay, at the Gabriel de Castilla base. “You live here?” exclaims an American woman who has just disembarked from the cruise ship Silver Cloud — which flies a Bahamas flag— and is walking among penguins and sea lions.

The Australian geographer Anne Hardy is already talking about a TikTok effect, with hundreds of millions of social media users drawn to a multitude of frivolous videos of tourists in Antarctic enclaves: dancing with DJs among icebergs, chipping ice to make drinks, swimming dressed as penguins, walking on the bed of a cruise ship with amazing views. In Antarctica it is already possible to run a marathon, paddle a canoe, climb its highest peak for over $50,000 and even participate in erotic parties. And Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites allow for videos to be shared in real time, from a continent previously disconnected from the rest of the planet. Hardy, from the University of Tasmania, maintains that this TikTok effect is boosting tourism and promoting “inappropriate behavior that can introduce invasive species or damage the Antarctic ecosystem.” Visitors have increased by 16% in just one year.

Antarctica is a continent theoretically protected as a nature reserve and dedicated to scientific research. An international agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, only allows two economic activities: fishing, with very strict rules; and tourism, which is not yet regulated. Spain, with two bases, is one of the 29 countries with the right to vote in the Antarctic Treaty. Quesada sits at the table where decisions are made. “Right now we are trying to regulate tourism. One of the options could be for tourists to contribute a small amount of money to conserve Antarctica,” he explains. This hypothetical tax could materialize at the next meeting of the Treaty in June.

The oceanographer Antonio Tovar came across another surreal scene on January 29. He went to collect water samples in front of the abandoned whaling station and found about a hundred people in bathing suits and bikinis, compulsively taking vertical videos of themselves among the rising steam, with the Dutch cruise ship Hondius anchored off the coast. “The fact that there are so many tourists bathing and, presumably, releasing a large quantity of sun creams is an obvious risk for the ecosystem,” explains Tovar aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa, a ship of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) that is participating in the Spanish campaign in Antarctica.

This expert is carrying out a simple experiment on the deck of the ship. In about 15 transparent bags he has collected seawater with different concentrations of sun creams and krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean that is vital for feeding whales, seals and penguins. With the highest doses of the cream, the little animals appear to be dying.

Tovar, from the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia, was a pioneer in the study of the impact of sun creams on nature. More than a decade ago, he and his colleagues warned that the increasing use of skin protectors, justified by the risk of cancer, had toxic effects on microalgae on the beaches of Mallorca. The American state of Hawaii has already banned sun creams with ingredients that kill corals. “In Antarctica everything is so pristine, so sensitive and so little affected that any minimal influence from humans has an impact almost immediately,” warns the researcher.

The Spanish Navy’s oceanographic vessel Hespérides set sail from Cartagena on November 20, bound for Antarctica. Its commander, frigate captain Fernando Moliné Juste, was horrified to find a giant graffiti around seven meters long painted on the abandoned whaling station complex on Deception Island. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators declared itself “shocked and disgusted” and assured that this “senseless act of vandalism” was not perpetrated by any of its cruise ship passengers. Small ships also visit the area without any type of control, and there have been reports of thefts of historical artifacts.

The Miami Beach-based travel agency Antarctica Cruises sells tickets on a range of cruises, including the Roald Amundsen, which costs upwards of $50,000 for an 18-day trip in a luxury cabin with a minibar and private balcony, and the more modest Hondius, which starts at around $10,000. Agency spokesman Jon Parker says the ships follow guidelines from the cruise operators’ association and the Antarctic Treaty, such as avoiding multiple cruises in the same location, limiting themselves to a maximum of 100 people on each beach at a time and having at least one guide for every 20 passengers. Tourists are asked not to come closer than five meters to the penguins, seals and sea lions.

Antonio Quesada, who is also the current president of the Council of National Antarctic Program Managers, stresses that an investigation is underway into the “huge graffiti” and that a Russian citizen on a private sailing boat is suspected. Quesada walks among the graves in the whalers’ cemetery, until he reaches an abandoned British hangar. “This is where the graffiti was,” he proclaims. It seems inconceivable that someone would have sailed the most dangerous seas on the planet, carrying brightly coloured spray cans, just to spray paint this protected historic site on an active volcano. The UKAHT foundation, which is responsible for preserving the remains of British explorers in Antarctica, organized the complete removal of the graffiti at the beginning of February. Quesada bitterly sounds the alarm: “Tourism is growing out of control. And this is a dramatic example of uncontrolled and poorly understood tourism.”

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