Some Arctic outfitters who lead tourists on adventure trips through the Far North have called for stricter rules and regulations to help prevent tourism-related accidents and deaths.

A growing interest in Arctic adventure tourism has led to more people wanting to visit the North Pole, climb northern mountains, or trek across large areas of land and ice on foot, ski or dogsled.

That same interest has led outfitters like Josée Auclair to demand more rules about how they are to lead such trips and how prepared they and their clients should be.

Auclair, who has been organizing trips in the Arctic with her husband Richard Weber for the past two decades, said the northern adventure industry and government must work together to develop tougher guidelines, in order to ensure tour operators and customers are prepared to deal with inclement weather and emergencies.

"We should be certified," Auclair said Thursday. "If you want to be a mountain climber, they have to go through certification and you have to prove that you can do the job. … The same thing should be done on the Arctic Ocean.

"At this point, it's a free-for-all," she said. "If you want to be a guide in the Arctic, anybody can just go and say, 'Well, I'm good.' But it's not because you're good down south, you're good in the Arctic. So things should be more organized."

Jillian Dickens, a marketing officer with Nunavut Tourism, said her group is willing to work with the industry and governments to put better guidelines in place.

"I think these concerns are valid because there needs to be rules and regulations in place before people can take a trip to the North Pole, for example, because there are a lot of precautions and a lot of skills required," Dickens said.

"This is something that Nunavut Tourism feels is a concern."

In the last few years, there have been seven deaths during adventure tours in Nunavut and the Yukon. Other adventurers have lost parts of their hands or feet, or suffered nerve damage from frostbite.

While tougher rules may not remove all the risks of an Arctic holiday, Auclair said they would reduce the possibility of accidents by weeding out the number of operators who don't have the proper expertise.