cruising the Northwest Passage, anyone?

[budmantis]

Great pictures, Cate and Andreas T.

Thinking of Franklin, of Davis, of Henry Hudson, of Amundsen, Peary, Bob Bartlett, and sp  many others, and of all their brave crews---this was their reason for living, and sometimes dying, this is the notorious NW Passage, for goodness sake! and this giant cruise ship has had clear sailing all the way so far----and probably will, right to Nuuk, from what I can see on Explorer, anyway.

The picture of the polar bear and the cruise ship in the background is striking and a sad testament to what we've done to our planet. The expedition of the Northabout is in keeping with the traditions of the people you name in the above paragraph. The cruise ship on the other hand reeks of commercialism and to me, has no place in the arctic.

[Cate]

budmantis, agreed completely.

I may be wrong, but I think that for Canadians in particular---of a certain age, at any rate---the NW Passage represents the entire dynamic of our country. Canada is a nation founded through courageous exploration in a frigid, hostile climate. My generation, who grew up when history was still taught in schools, learned to see our northern expanses and Arctic shorelines---and their peoples---as the core of the Canadian soul.

This is for all fans of polar exploration and of true modern-day expeditions like the valiant Northabout, and for anyone who may not yet have heard of the great Stan Rogers:

[budmantis]

My heritage is French-Canadian. I still have cousins in Quebec and have visited Quebec city a few times. It is a great and beautiful country.

[TerryM]

Cate


The polar bear & foreign ship photo might be used to generate some heat under the seats of our politicians. I hope the Rangers fire a shot across her bow. There is a precedent for such an action.
Send them back to Alaska!


Sorry, but it's the Canadian NWP
Terry

[Cate]

Terry, yep, our NWP, our waters. Not international waters. Too bad our PM is too busy schmoozing with China to say anything about it. Like, "Welcome to Canada!"

Just watching CS today---she's hanging a hard left into Lancaster Sound....hmmm. Perhaps killing a bit of that extra time they built into the schedule in case of encountering sea ice--which didn't happen?

The bridge cams are showing some massive and spectacular landforms ahead and to starboard as she rounds the SW corner of Devon Island.

Next port of call, Pond Inlet, Sept 4. 

[Neven]

Just watching CS today---she's hanging a hard left into Lancaster Sound....hmmm. Perhaps killing a bit of that extra time they built into the schedule in case of encountering sea ice--which didn't happen?

Looks like some time this week, members of the animation team will don their penguin suits early in the morning and get on an ice floe. The passengers can then pay the additional entertainment fee for a couple of boats, guns and selfie sticks. Wait till the folks at home see this!

[budmantis]

Just watching CS today---she's hanging a hard left into Lancaster Sound....hmmm. Perhaps killing a bit of that extra time they built into the schedule in case of encountering sea ice--which didn't happen?

Looks like some time this week, members of the animation team will don their penguin suits early in the morning and get on an ice floe. The passengers can then pay the additional entertainment fee for a couple of boats, guns and selfie sticks. Wait till the folks at home see this!

Hmm. I wonder how many passengers on the cruise know there are no penguins in the arctic?

[Cate]

The one-percenters and their "unexpected adventure" of trampling around on Beechey Island, sacred to the memory of the Franklin expedition.

"Upon landing on Beechey Island, one’s eyes are immediately drawn to the highest point on the beach. It’s not a grove of trees or a welcome sign. It’s a row of tombstones. They mark the graves of a few men from John Franklin’s unsuccessful expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. All 130 crewmembers and their captains perished, mostly from starvation and illness, not far from this spot. It’s easy to imagine the skeletal remains, forlorn and frozen, scattered around Starvation Cove."

http://blog.crystalcruises.com/unexpected-adventures-part-ii-beechey-island/

[Cate]

Zodiacs crowd in on him from one side, while on the other side lurks the mother ship.

[Polynya88]

From the track shown at the Crystal Serenity site http://www.crystalcruises.com/cruises/cruise-guidebook/our-ships/crystal-serenity/live-views it has crossed through Bellot strait and I am surprised to see icebergs on their bridge camera
Is there another source for these tabular icebergs than Greenland? I thought that the predominant direction of drift is west to east in Lancaster sound (that is how  broken sea ice has been travelling) so I am not clear how bergs from Greenland would make their way there.

My earlier comment about "concentration of the ice field" is illustrated there: what is seen in the photo is very low concentration as area percentage and as an ice field it does not show up on AMSR2. But hitting this low concentration would have worse consequences than running into some of the higher concentration rubble seen elsewhere I would think. But maybe I just overreacted to a casual remark by Cate.

Actually, in Lancaster Sound there is a west-flowing current along the north side, then it peters out near the west end of Devon Island, where there is then a very light south-flowing current coming out of Wellington Channel. Along the south side of Lancaster sound there is an east-flowing current, but during periods of Open Water northerly winds will occasionally drive bergs down into Prince Regent Inlet - as you see in the pics. Icebergs frozen into the Fast Ice south of Resolute Bay in winter are not uncommon.

[Cate]

First sea ice, then polar bears, now glaciers.

The one-percenters are having a good nosey around a Devon Island glacier today. Maybe they'll see a gigantic calving up close! Real close. We can only hope. What an "unexpected adventure" that would be to "capture" on your phone!

 

[Cate]

CBC report: idiot one-percenters complain that there's not enough ice in the Arctic.

[budmantis]

CBC report: idiot one-percenters complain that there's not enough ice in the Arctic.

We wouldn't want to disappoint the one percenters now, would we?

[Cate]

Blogpost from the Top to Top Global Climate Expedition:
Pachamama meets CS, and reflections on cruising the Arctic.

Thanks to Jim Hunt's blog for the link to the link.

https://toptotop.org/2016/09/01/1st-cruise-ship/

[Jim Hunt]

Blogpost from the Top to Top Global Climate Expedition:

Pachamama has successfully made it through the Fury & Hecla Strait. Crystal Serenity took the easier route via Pond Inlet!

https://twitter.com/GreatWhiteCon/status/772479052888285184

[Cate]

Blogpost from the Top to Top Global Climate Expedition:

Pachamama has successfully made it through the Fury & Hecla Strait. Crystal Serenity took the easier route via Pond Inlet!

https://twitter.com/GreatWhiteCon/status/772479052888285184

Amazing---I hope they post pics.

Speaking of which---wrt Crystal Serenity, I have to admit, it would be nice for the record to have pics or vid of the largest ship ever traversing Bellot Strait.  Maybe someone on the Shackleton has a blog....?

[Jim Hunt]

wrt Crystal Serenity, I have to admit, it would be nice for the record to have pics or vid of the largest ship ever traversing Bellot Strait.  Maybe someone on the Shackleton has a blog....?

I have a blog!

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2016/08/crystal-serenity-sets-sail-for-the-northwest-passage/#Aug-31

[Cate]

Jim, indeed, and I follow it with interest!---and referenced it in my post #63 above.

I assume the photo is the CS in Bellot Strait, bridge cam view?

[Jim Hunt]

Jim, indeed, and I follow it with interest!---and referenced it in my post #63 above.

You are most kind Cate. I didn't mean to imply that you were unaware of my blog. Merely that you appeared to be unaware that I had posted a selfie of CS in Bellot Strait on August 30th.

I assume the photo is the CS in Bellot Strait, bridge cam view?

It is indeed.

[Cate]

Jim, hehe, selfie indeed. I confess I don't check your blog EVERY day---but I do try to keep up.

What I'd love to see is a Shackleton's-eye-view of the CS in the strait.  It is after all one for the record books.   

[Cate]

The NSIDC say the CS sailed through the NWP in less than three weeks? Say, from Barrow on Aug 25 to Baffin Bay on Sept 4, I make the NWP part of the voyage more like ten days.

Chris Mooney on implications for the Arctic:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/09/09/first-came-an-arctic-luxury-cruise-next-comes-arctic-shipping/?utm_term=.6fd9c69925dc

[Cate]

"...experiencing things before crazy humans destroy it....": Bob Lentz, CS passenger.

CS passengers do not do irony.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-giant-cruise-ship-historic-voyage.html

[budmantis]

Perhaps the Crystal Serenity is a "ship of fools"?

[Ninebelowzero]

Give it a few more years of change and there will be  big cats and trimarans regularly racing "round the pole"

[RoxTheGeologist]

1%? I'd guess a significant % of the people posting in this forum are in the global top 1% for wealth. All you need to do is own your own home in California for 10 years and you fall into the bracket. 34m people in the US have a net worth more than $1m. It certainly doesn't mean you can afford to cruise the NW passage on the CS during your cushy retirement.

I think you might be talking about the 0.36% threshold...

http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit-suisse/

[Cate]

Rox, no doubt you are correct. I haven't done the math and am not a scientist. I use the term "one-percenter" colloquially in the Occupy tradition, to signify people who have more money than they know what to do with, and certainly a lot more money than concern for the Arctic and climate change. But yes, it's lazy to say "one-percenter" when "zero point thirty-six percenter" is more accurate.

[sidd]

"34m people in the US have a net worth more than $1m"

I shan't use fortune as a source since i refuse to lower advertising/malware protection as the site requires.

From wikipedia: Credit Suisse Report - Wealth Distribution & Gini (2013) table
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth

USA over 1 million US$  5.5 m people.

Lot of them intermarried ...

Perhaps lets just say anyone who throws down more than 20 odd K US$ on a cruise exacerbating global warming and eco impact is up there in terms of disposable cash, and down there in terms of moral standing.

sidd

[Sigmetnow]

Apocalypse Tourism? Cruising the Melting Arctic Ocean

...When the Crystal Serenity emerged free and clear of the maze on Sept. 5, there were no accounts of scurvy or cannibalism, only tales of bingeing on themed buffets and grumbles from shutterbugs about the Arctic’s monotonous landscape.

Operated by Crystal Cruises, the Serenity became on that day the first passenger liner to successfully ply the Northwest Passage. As climate change melts Arctic sea ice twice as fast as models predicted, more and larger ships have made their way along these fatal shores. In 2013, the Nordic Orion was the first bulk cargo carrier to transit the Passage, hauling a load of coal.

Rates on the Serenity started at around $22,000 per person. For that, passengers were anointed, by Slate, “the world’s worst people”—for venturing into a vulnerable ecosystem in a diesel-burning, 69,000-ton behemoth. Canada’s National Post described the cruise as an “invasion” of indigenous communities. Britain’s Telegraph hinted at Titanic hubris, asking, Is this “the world’s most dangerous cruise”?

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-crystal-serenity-northwest-passage-cruise/

[Cate]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/new-rules-for-arctic-cruises-1.3767846

"The Nunavut government is already considering rules to reduce the community impact of giant ships such as the Crystal Serenity....

The new rules would limit the number of passengers that would visit a community at any one time. The regulations would also require cruise operators to distribute guidelines to their clients and require the companies to detail the economic benefits they generate."

Visitors are important to Northern communities because of the cash they bring in, which they spend mainly on local art and craft---which they can purchase relatively cheaply direct from the makers. Northern art and craft fetches many times the local price when sold in southern galleries and shops. CS passengers spent $110,000 in Cambridge Bay (pop 1500). An average of about $100 per passenger. Hey, big spenders.

[Cate]

Extinction tourism threatens Arctic communities and the Inuit way of life.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/20/inuit-arctic-ecosystem-extinction-tourism-crystal-serenity