On the website of French luxury cruise ship operator Compagnie du Ponant, alongside photos of immaculate ice floes and plush passenger suites, it declares: “The white paradise welcomes you within its sanctuary. Reach the ultimate in a polar odyssey that is conscious and respectful of the environment.”
Beginning two years ago, the company, which is majority-owned by Artemis, the holding company of French billionaire François Pinault and his family, has been organising high-end cruises to Antarctica, promising passengers a five-star service à la française while discovering the wonders of the Earth’s last virgin continent.
Ponant notably operates a powerful ice-breaking cruise ship, Le Commandant Charcot, delivered in 2021 and which boasts a spa, two restaurants, one of which is managed by the renowned chef Alain Ducasse, and includes passenger suites of almost 100 square metres with private terraces and Jacuzzis. The ship has a crew of 215 and accommodation for 245 passengers.
The company says its aim is to offer its passengers the “feeling of travelling on a private yacht”, and for this “emotion-creating” experience on, for example, a 14-day cruise departing from Ushuaia, in the far south of Argentina, prices begin at a minimum of 17,000 euros.
Ponant also lays claim to being “animated by science”, and on board each cruise to Antarctica are around a dozen expert naturalist guides to take passengers on inflatable dinghies to observe, close-up, the wildlife, allowing them to “better understand” the need to protect the polar region and in turn become “eco-ambassadors”.
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Pierrick (not his real name which he asked to be withheld) worked as one of these naturalist guides during a two-week cruise on Le Commandant Charcot. “We give conferences according to our speciality – ornithology, glaciology, oceanology,” he told Mediapart. “We address an audience made up of company leaders or retirees who own foundations. If we heighten awareness among just 50 or so, it can have a strong impact.”
That aside, he and others among his colleagues on the Ponant cruises are nevertheless doubtful about the interest of numerous other passengers in environmental issues. Nicolas (real name withheld), another guide, gave a blunt assesment: “Some couldn’t care less and are there to take photos while sipping champagne.”
Julie (real name withheld) also worked as a naturalist guide on Le Commandant Charcot. “When we set off in ten Zodiacs [dinghies] with diesel motors to take wealthy tourists to see the ice, you ask yourself what you’re doing there,” she said. “We are sometimes able to make them aware of the link between their lifestyles and the fragility of ecosystems – but at what cost?”
With a biodiversity that includes emperor penguins, humpback whales and elephant seals, Antarctica is among the planet’s most fragile wild environments. The white continent, which plays a central role in the worldwide climate system, is particularly impacted by global warming, leading to an ever earlier yearly thawing of the ice sheet. According to a study published in 2018 in the journal Nature, Antarctica lost nearly 76 billion tonnes of ice per year from 1992 to 2011, but from 2012 to 2017 that ice loss increased to a yearly 219 billion tonnes.
Antarctica is designated as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science” under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (aka the Madrid Protocol). Access to Antarctica is strictly regulated and every visitor must follow stipulations concerning biosecurity and waste disposal.
“For every landing by Zodiac, the boots of the tourists must be disinfected beforehand in basins filled with Virkon, a bactericidal, fungicidal and virucidal disinfectant,” explained the Ponant naturalist guide Nicolas. “But afterwards, the contents of the basins are thrown overboard into the water.”
There are also accounts of how some passengers can behave inconsiderately towards the vulnerable polar environment. “We are in places that are unique in the world and extremely protected, but a cruise passenger will complain that he was taken twice in a row to see penguins, or another will with no consideration throw his cigarette butt into the water,” said a former chief officer with Ponant, who worked on the cruises to Antarctica.
“Some even take selfies with the endemic species, sometimes approaching them to within a few centimetres,” said Marie (not her real name), who was invited by the cruise company on a trip to Antarctica.
While Ponant claims that the cruises raise awareness among passengers about the need to protect the continent and in turn convince others of this, the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), which argues the same, has only around 500 volunteers to be “Antarctic Ambassadors” listed on its website.
“A retired man on board confided to me that he didn’t care about climate change,” added Marie. “And one passenger, leaving a conference [by a naturalist guide], told me that she wouldn’t change her behaviour […] In the end, the passengers who look at the landscape for which they have paid [to do so] are rare. They play at Candy Crush on their phone, take a glass of Champagne with their new friends, sometimes turning their back on the scenery.”
On its website and in its glossy brochures, the Compagnie du Ponant boasts of an “eco-friendly” expedition to Antarctica, founded upon “a global and innovating approach, thought out with one objective: to minimise the impact of [the] odyssey on the planet”. Above all, it trumpets the green credentials of Le Commandant Charcot, which is powered by liquified natural gas (LNG) and five electric batteries.
“To go and explore such a place in the world, it was inconceivable for us not to use the cleanest available energy today, LNG,” commented Mathieu Petiteau, Ponant’s director of research and development, in the company’s online presentation of the vessel.
In fact, LNG is a fuel which is predominantly made up of methane, a greenhouse gas. Fanny Pointet, head of the maritime transport department of the European Federation for Transport and Environment, an umbrella body for NGOs working in the two fields, told Mediapart: “Cruise ships are the most emitting types of vessels in the world and use engines with the highest leaks of methane. The result is that the carbon footprint of an LNG liner over the whole of its life cycle is worse [than] a vessel using diesel.”
In 2021, during its 50 days of navigation, Le Commandant Charcot emitted 7,362 tonnes of CO2, according to the database of the European Union’s Monitoring, Reporting and Verification system (MRV) recording maritime transport emissions. That corresponds to the emissions of about 27,000 European vehicles over the same period. “In sum, just several hundred people emitted as much CO2 in less than two months, for a luxury leisure activity, as the average carbon footprint of more than 3,500 French people, in a world supposed to respect the international pledges on [tackling] climate change,” said Pointet.
About 74,000 people visited the white continent in the 2019-2020 season, according to figures from the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty. Between 2015 and 2020, tourist traffic in the region grew by 103%, reported the IAATO.
“It’s a tourism of the last chance, that of a privileged few who see this world of ice before it disappears,” said Marie.
“It’s become a fashionable thing,” said the former Ponant cruise ship chief officer, “because cruise passengers post photos of the sublime scenery on Instagram. That makes others want to go there. Each [docking] spot in Antarctica must be booked in advance in order to be able to draw alongside, but because demand is strong everything is already filled up and boats must sometimes join a queue.”
In parallel with the development of human activity in Antarctica, the negative effects of tourism are also developing. A scientific study published last year in Nature Communications estimated that each tourist’s trip to the continent causes the disappearance of 83 tonnes of snow.
“It’s an industry that for me is already at its maximum,” said Pierrick, the naturalist guide. “At some point there will have to be quotas.” As for his colleague Julie: “I have reached my limits, it’s surely the last season that I do,” she said. “There are too many new companies that are launching into this business.”
In February this year, when the area of sea ice around Antarctica fell to a record low in the 45-year period it has been monitored by satellite, the IAATO authorised around 60 tourism operators to pursue their services for trips to the region.
It is a profitable business; a third of the Compagnie du Ponant’s turnover (which was 380 million euros in 2019) comes from its cruises to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, its cruise ships, including Le Commandant Charcot, are registered in Wallis and Futuna, a French collectivity in the South Pacific, where there is no corporation tax, no revenue tax nor Value Added Tax.
Ponant also rents out its ships to private companies for exclusive cruises. Several months ago, naturalist guide Nicolas took part in a ten-day cruise to Antarctica booked by the US media and entertainment group Disney. The programme included Disney ‘pyjama days’ and instructions on decorating the Compagnie du Ponant coats handed to passengers with patches promoting the Disney film Frozen. “A retired woman took photos every day with her cuddly toy on the ice,” said Nicolas. “And as naturalist guides we had to wear, for our last conference, Mickey Mouse ears. With that, I said to myself that things have definitively gone too far.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse