This is the luckiest photo I’ve ever taken, captured on the best cruise of my life to Antarctica a dozen years ago.  Our 12-day voyage aboard the 150-passenger Hanseatic, a German ship with ice-strengthened hull, was charted by Radisson Seven Seas Cruises (since renamed Regent Seven Seas Cruises) departed from Ushuaia, Argentina.  After departing Ft. Stanley in the Falklands we never saw another ship, building or person until returning to port.  We entered nature on steroids: schools of leaping killer whales, albatross careening overhead, zodiac landings to spy on hundreds of thousands of penguins next to sleeping elephant seals the size of a Volkswagen beetle.  I figured that if God lived anywhere it would be Antarctica.

So the Nov. 23 sinking of the Explorer made me shudder when I thought how lucky the ships passengers and crew were to have survived.  The weather can change from calm seas and blue sky to high wind and snow in the blink of an eye. Four hours in lifeboats?  The calmest sea with only five-foot swells would frighten me.  NBC ran a video taken by one of the passengers which shows it was pretty scary: click here

Add to that, Explorer did have an ice-strengthened hull which — in theory — should have protected it better.  Sill, the ice put a hole the size of a fist though it.   I can’t imagine thousands of passengers and crew abandoning a full-size cruise ship.

Environmental Impact

According to the shipping industry magazine, Marine Log,  Chilean scientists are determining environmental damage from the sinking.  After spotting a 1.5 kilometer long oil slick the Chilean Navy is sending an icebreaker to disperse the fuel slick.  According to a Chilean Navy press release, scientists detected hydrocarbons; it’s not only the fuel but the ships painting and the heating and air-conditioning units that could affect Antarctica’s marine life, including local penguin life.

“The effects of this sinking are going to be especially severe. The accident site is an area of high and very particular biodiversity, and the marine wildlife is going to suffer,” Antonia Fortt, the head of Oceana’s Clean Oceans Program, told the Santiago Times. “Damages caused by oil spills are long term because they are so difficult to clean up. Consequently, we are talking about permanent damages to the area’s wildlife population.”

This tourist would rather bypass the earth’s most wondrous continent than contribute to its demise.  But the choice may not be up to much much longer.

The Future Of Antarctica Tourism

A cruise ship executive, speaking on the condition of anonomity, said, ”The Antarctic Treaty Organization has already asked for cruise lines to voluntarily curtail cruising and landings in the region and is vocally opposed to anything but small, ice-classed expedition ships. Now, with one grounding and oil spill last year and this sinking, they are most certain to petition the UN and the International Maritime Organization to close the region off to cruising.”

This is not even the first maritime mishap to occur recently in Antarctica.  In January, 2007, the 280-passenger Nordkapp, a Norwegian expedition vessel with ice strengthened hull, ran aground near Deception Island. It was refloated and there were no oil damages.  Nordkapp later received passengers from the Explorer as she was sinking.

Grant Munro, Manager of Falkland Conservation, a branch of the International Association of Antarctic Cruise Organization, said ”the presence in Antarctic waters of larger cruise vessels than the Nordkapp, is a warning of the dangers of navigation in an area where charts were not always up-to-date and unforeseen dangers ever present.”

The cruise industry executive asked, “How do you rescue the 700- to- 3,000 passengers aboard one of the many conventional cruise ships presently sailing in Antarctic waters?  It would be a logistical nightmare.  If one of these ships were disabled, it would require a massive flotilla.  How would they be offloaded ….. and to where?”

What do you think? Should large cruise ships without ice strengthened hulls continue to visit Antarctica?   

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