Any discussion about the economies of the Arctic would be very incomplete without a discussion of tourism. A key growing sector of the Arctic economy. Now takes many forms, Cruise ships to the Northwest Passage, or along the Northern Sea route. Ice breakers to the North Pole, Russian ones that's kind of armchair adventure, I guess I could call it Ecotourism. Let's go see the polar bears or things like that, and things like sport, fishing and hunting, of course. Now at the North Pole, this is a big attraction to some people who are going to go to the North Pole, yes you can do that. You can do that by boarding one of those big Russian icebreakers, and they will take you there. As we see here is a couple of people cavorting right around the North Pole or right at it pretty close, I'm sure. There is a balloon there a hot air balloons so I suppose people can go up on that and look down at the North Pole. I've never been there maybe someday I will. Little side story. When I was very young, I was waiting in a place called Resolute Bay. That was a place where a lot of logistics go through there and we were on our way to Ellesmere Island and we talked to this gentleman who was a friend of one of the people I was working with and he said he has the North pole in his garage. Well, the story was he was chartering twin order aircraft, caching few things, I'm sure, and that would take people to the North Pole. We had a North Pole and his garage it look's like a barber-pole. He took me to see it and he'd stick it in when we got there. Any case that's my own little story, but here is those same people or more of them. At the North Pole, there is the hot air balloon. You can go there and look down, and so everyone are all very happy. You can see that's one of the big Russian icebreaker, I think that's the late property. I'm not sure. I don't read the Russian, I'm afraid. But now here's a question. You can go to the North Pole on a Russian icebreaker. How much in US dollars does a two-week crews to the North Pole take? How much does it cost? The answer is about 30,000 dollars. You've got to have some fairly deep pockets if you want to do such a thing. I would imagine the accommodations are not that great. I mean, this is icebreaker, and icebreakers can be pretty dull, noisy when they are breaking ice. But for the adventuresome, you can do this if you want to. If you have 30,000 dollars hanging around, go to the North Pole. Now of course, you can take a cruise ship, do it in more luxury like the Crystal Serenity. We've talked about the Crystal Serenity a few times, which is twice gone through Amonton's route through the Northwest Passage is the Southern route, Amonton's route with its boatload of moneyed tourists. This picture here is showing the route that was taken in 2016,16, August to 17, September. You have to take this in late Summer, or early autumn if you're going to do it because that is when the Northwest Passage Amonton's route anyhow. Is going to be open, and when the crew is, they started in Seward Alaska, made a number of stops, looks like they stopped in, Nome Alaska, for example, then went on Cambridge Bay and a number of places and Made their way through. They did it again the next year, they did an icebreaker escort, as I recall because ice conditions were more severe.They're variable in this region, of course, but, you could do this. I'm not quite clear on how much it would cost you to do this, but I expect it would be something on the order of what it would cost you to take an icebreaker to the North Pole. Polar bears. People want to come out and see the polar bear, here we see a picture of the tundra buggy. I believe this is Churchill, and here you see the tour itself. They're all taking photographs of their polar bears from the safety of the buggy.It's again, sort of armchair enthusiast, I suppose. You would call to see the polar bear. Sport fishing, of all kinds, I've shown this picture before. Here's a young gentleman with his arctic chair. Which I believe he later released, but you can go up sport fishing for char, for salmon, for all kinds of things, and it's a big issue Icebergs. Tourism to Greenland to see the bigger drainage glaciers, and take a look at some of the iceberg, here you can take, for example, a little boat up to the iceberg, maybe break a chunk off and put it in your gin and tonic later that night.There is something else you can do if you want to. Svalbard, there's a lot of tourism in Svalbard, and it is now viewed as an economic backbone. This isn't just a picture from an article I grabbed from Arctic today for January 15th of 2020. Really it's just getting us a story, is all about how, tourism in Svalbard has really been growing. Now you can do a lot of things there. You could, again go to the glaciers, and you can get close to them and see icebergs calving. You probably don't want to get too close if you are in small boat. Again, grab pieces of an iceberg maybe, and put them in your drink later that night. I was in Svalbard years ago at NEA Alison, and I remember this boatload of tourists coming with a small cruise ship, maybe there were 50 or a 100, but they docked, and they came in,and they spent about an hour walking around in, and went back out on the ship again, but that's what you can do if you want. Ecotourism, all of all kinds. Here's some people in their backpacks, ready for a long hike, camping, I suppose. It's a pretty darn wild place. I'd only seen other little part of it when I was there, but, point is that there's a lot going on. Finally, the Aurora Borealis. Great tourist attraction. Fair bank, which is not technically quite Arctic, is kind of a nice place to go for the Aurora Borealis. And so, yeah, beautiful Aurora Borealis. Now, what causes the Aurora Borealis is charged particles coming from the sun, lots of protons notably, they are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field. Then they collide with gas molecules high in the atmosphere, drives those electrons into higher orbitals and then they fall back and they release photons and you get these nice images like you see here. Now, here's a question. Is it possible to be too far north to see the northern lights or the Aurora Borealis? The answer is yes, you can be too far north. Is it a particular zone that they are best seen? You go too far north then you're not going to see them. So kind of just an interesting tidbit there. The northern lights if you want to see, the north pole is not the place to go. So in-any case, the issue here is tourism is a big economic driver in the Arctic and is likely to continue to grow. Thank you.
