Fig. 1: Human presence in Antarctica has surged in recent decades.

a Blue dots represent research stations in the area of interest according to the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP)³³. Dotted lines represent popular tourist routes. Most of the visitors travelling to Antarctica with International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) embark on a ship for cruising the Antarctic Peninsula, where about half of the research facilities in the continent are located. Around 1% of all visitors fly to the interior of Antarctica where they stay in field camps such as Union Glacier Camp. IAATO has now more than 50 operators whose fleet of 54 vessels (including 6 large cruise ships) registered a total of 378 departures in the 2019–2020 season³⁶. b Visitors have been growing steadily since 2011–2012. Of the 74,401 visitors who travelled with IAATO members to the region, about 25% travelled on cruise-only vessels (i.e., vessels carrying more than 500 passengers) and did not set foot on the continent. c There are currently 76 research stations in Antarctica (including seasonal facilities) with a combined accommodation capacity (for both scientists and staff) of about five thousand beds³³. There are 11 research stations (with a total of 700 beds) on King George Island only³³. Plots were generated by using Python’s Matplotlib Library⁵⁸.