Stains on The White Continent

By Dick Thompson

On the once pristine shores of the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands, a vast oil slick has become a tide of death. The spreading film has killed thousands of krill, the tiny shrimplike crustaceans that are a major food source for fish, birds and whales. Oil-soaked penguins are in danger of freezing to death, and nearly all of the skua chicks have died.

As teams of divers from the U.S. and South America struggled last week to plug a hole in the Argentine ship Bahia Paraiso, which had sunk and was leaking 3,000 gal. of fuel a day, squadrons of scientists rushed in to assess the damage caused by Antarctica's first major oil spill. "This is the worst ecological disaster for Antarctica, period," says James Barnes, general counsel to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition. It is sure to stoke the already heated debate over the future of development, tourism and mining in Antarctica.

The calamity began on Jan. 28, when the captain of the Bahia Paraiso, a naval resupply ship that doubles as a tourist boat, sailed through waters identified on charts as having "dangerous ledges and pinnacles." The ship was shaken by a "terrible jolt," says passenger Nadia Le Bon. "I thought we hit an iceberg." Instead, the ship had struck Full Astern Reef, which ripped a 30-ft. gash through its double hull and into the engine room. With the ship listing and the smell of gasoline thick in the air, the 314 passengers and crew members were rescued unharmed by scientists in small boats from the U.S. research center at Palmer Station, a mile away. But the ship began leaking its 250,000 gal. of oil and spilling cargo, including drums of diesel and jet fuel and tanks of compressed gas, from its deck.

The shipwreck is one result of the largely unregulated growth of Antarctic enterprise. Says Peter Wilkniss, head of the National Science Foundation's polar programs: "We are witnessing the dawn of the commercial age in Antarctica." Thousands of tourists are flocking to the once inaccessible continent. Throughout the 1984-85 season, only 400 people visited Antarctica, but in the week before the Bahia Paraiso hit the reef, more than 500 visitors passed through Palmer Station alone. And Antarctic tourists are doing more than sailing to research centers for short visits and lecture tours. In 1988, 35 adventurers paid $35,000 each to set foot on the South Pole, and this year another group is skiing 600 miles to the bottom of the world. "Tourism really needs to be regulated," says Mary Voyteck, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Whatever happens to tourism, the devastation from the oil spill could be a serious setback to the idea of oil and mineral exploration in Antarctica. Last May, 33 nations drafted an agreement that would eventually open the area to mining and drilling. That treaty, which the U.S. Senate will consider for ratification in the next few months, is vigorously opposed by a broad coalition of environmental groups. Any hopes that the Senate will approve the agreement may have sunk with the Bahia Paraiso.