Climate Change is Luring Cruise Ships to Sail Risky Arctic Passageshttps://qz.com/1679630/climate-change-lures-cruise-ships-to-sail-risky-arctic-passages/August 1, 2019: On August 27, 2010, in Canadian waters above the Arctic Circle, a cruise ship called the
Clipper Adventurer ran aground on a rock no one knew was there. Two hundred passengers and crew had set out on an adventure few tourists have experienced: a journey through the
Northwest Passage.The ship, a 295-foot (90-meter) vessel operated by the travel company Adventure Canada, struck the rock early on a Friday evening. The closest humans were in coastal Kugluktuk, 55 miles away, a mostly Inuit community of about 1,400 people in the Canadian Arctic region of Nunavut. A Canadian icebreaker, surveying waters 500 miles away, changed course to conduct a rescue operation. It arrived on Sunday.
Weather was calm but that’s hardly a given that far north, where storms and extreme conditions can roll in quickly.
In the vast Canadian Arctic, fewer than 10% of the waters are charted. As more ships brave the territory—encouraged by passageways thawed by temperatures rising faster than anywhere else on Earth—
the likelihood of a dangerous grounding increases.The
Edmonton Sun interviewed the owner of the tour company who was quoted saying:
"we were simply following the chart that we had and right where there wasn’t any indication that there was something in the water, there was this large rock.” (... Surprise!)
Canada, which used to expect just a few yacht voyages a year, is now dealing with almost two dozen. Vessels of all kinds—including cargo ships—are on the rise too, and the number of trips taken in Canadian Arctic waters nearly doubled in the last decade.
https://www.theatlas.com/charts/xbKAW0C86 In August 2018, another cruise ship struck a rock, also off the coast of Nunavut. The ship, operated by Canadian cruise company
One Ocean Expeditions, was carrying 162 passengers and crew. The rescue operation cost the Canadian armed forces half a million dollars.
Just this March, a cruise ship’s engines broke down off the coast of Norway with more than 1,300 passengers on board. Helicopter rescue teams managed to airlift 500 people off the ship, and
it was headed for a collision with rocks while 800 people were still on board, Byers says. By a stroke of luck, the ship’s crew managed to restart the engine before that could happen. But the near-miss signals another problem:
“When you talk about large ships, you just can’t get people off in time,” he says.
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Arctic Cruise Ship Owners Ordered to Pay $469K in Costs for 2010 Groundinghttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/cruise-ship-clipper-adventurer-nunavut-judgement-1.3973937-------------
Other 'groundings':
http://www.komar.org/faq/travel/vacation/antarctica/ocean-nova/
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