Japanese Oppose Tourism In The Antarctic

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32379, 19 August 1970, Page 15

Japanese Oppose Tourism In The Antarctic

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) TOKYO. Japanese polar scientists are against largescale tourist visits to the Antarctic. They want the great white continent kept off the tourist map until scientists and biologists have completed their studies. “The Antarctic is the only continent not yet contaminated by civilised man. It offers a unique opportunity for study and research,” said Dr T. Torii, secretary-general of the Japan Polar Research Association, in Tokyo. Dr Torii, a veteran of four Antarctic visits and who has spent two long, dark winters there, said the question of tourism and the inevitable

pollution it would bring would be a major topic at the 12-nation Antarctic Treaty meeting in Tokyo in October. He said the Japanese delegation was considering asking the meeting to hold back bids to open up the Antarctic to tourists until scientific research had been completed. Forty members of the twelfth Japanese Antarctic research expedition will leave Tokyo in November for Syowa Station, about 1800 miles north of the South Pole. Thirty of them will winter over. New Zealand attention was focused on Japanese activities in the Antarctic earlier this year, with the drama of the icebreaker Fuji, which was held in closed pack-ice for almost a month after leaving Syowa Station. Dr Torii said New Zealand had invited two Japanese scientists to spend three or four months in the coming summer on a joint research

project at New Zealand’s Vanda Station, near Scott Base. Research, he said, would be centred on a large unfrozen lake which is five times as saline as the sea. “We would like to know where this water comes from, and why it is so salty,” he said. “Only 2 per cent of the Antarctic continent is icefree, and the largest area is near Scott Base. We are particularly interested in studying this ’Oasis’ area.” Dr Torii said a Japanese geochemist would study similar ice-free lakes near Syowa Station, on the other side of the continent, and the results of the two research projects would be compared. Dr Torii paid tribute to the work of New Zealand scientists in the Antarctic and described Scott Base as the most up-to-date station there.