“You’d see massive glacier calvings, and you’d just want to cry. But all the guests would be cheering. And you’d be like … ‘can you not put two and two together?’”

Those are the words of a former Antarctic tour guide we interviewed. For anyone interested in nature, few jobs sound more enviable. You spend months among penguins, orcas and glaciers, helping visitors experience one of the world’s most extraordinary and unspoiled places.

But for some guides, like those we quote in this article, that privilege slowly became impossible to reconcile with their beliefs. Watching climate change unfold while helping thousands more visitors reach the continent eventually led them to leave the jobs they’d once dreamed of.

Antarctic tourism is growing fast, with over 120,000 visits in 2025-26 and up to 450,000 expected each summer within a decade. Our new study reveals how Antarctic tour guides grapple with the dilemma at the heart of their work — bringing more and more people to an ecologically vulnerable area, and helping cause some of the greatest CO₂ emissions of any form of tourism.

“I was down there on the hottest day ever........

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