As ice melts and polar regions become more accessible, authorities have become more and more aware of the potential risks for tourists, in particular, cruise ships, visiting in remote areas.
Glaciologist Jason Box calls it “Disaster Tourism”.
Now a cruise ship has become stuck in Northwest Greenland, rescuers are far away, some passengers have Covid. All that is needed for the movie version is an escaped serial killer on board.
Anyone that’s visited Greenland in recent years cannot fail to notice how tourism is reshaping the society.
Below, the flashy Best Western Hotel has popped up in contrast to more traditional architecture in Ilulissat.
It’s a concern that scientists have expressed, in particular a few years ago, when a cruise ships started navigating Canada’s Northwest Passage. A ship like this could be carrying thousands of people – traveling well beyond the reach of organized rescue efforts should anything go wrong.
A mishap in one of these areas could make the Titanic seem like a walk in the park.
Two people on board a cruise ship run aground in Greenland’s Alpefjord national park have Covid-19, according to an Australian passenger on board, but everybody remained in “good spirits”.
The Australian-operated Ocean Explorer, which is carrying 206 passengers and crew, ran aground while touring the national park on Monday, around 1,400km north-east of Greenland’s capital Nuuk.
The 104m-long ship, which departed from Norway on 1 September and runs until 22 September, remained stuck after the high tide on Tuesday failed to lift it free.
However, authorities in Denmark said that a scientific fishing vessel was scheduled to arrive later on Wednesday and would attempt to pull the Ocean Explorer free at high tide.
“A cruise ship in trouble in the national park is obviously a worry. The nearest help is far away, our units are far away, and the weather can be very unfavourable,” Cmdr Brian Jensen of the Danish navy’s joint Arctic command said in a statement on Tuesday.
“However, in this specific situation, we do not see any immediate danger to human life or the environment, which is reassuring,” he added.Australia-based Aurora Expeditions which operates the ship, said that all passengers and and crew were safe. Many of the passengers are believed to be Australian, along with a mix of tourists from other countries including New Zealand, Britain, the United States and South Korea.
“We are actively engaged in efforts to free the MV Ocean Explorer from its grounding. Our foremost commitment is to ensure the vessel’s recovery without compromising safety,” Aurora said.
Gina Hill, an Australian who is on board with her husband, said they felt a shudder, then what sounded like scrape when the ship ran aground.
She said the passengers were in good spirits and were being entertained by lectures and stories of expeditions by the crew. .
“No one seems to be afraid, and they’re giving us updates quite regularly,” Hill said.
Hill said the passengers had been told by the crew that two other passengers had Covid and that they had been isolated. Some passengers had chosen to wear masks in the public areas, but others had not, she said.
Located across from the ice sheet that covers the world’s largest island, Alpefjord sits in a remote corner of Greenland, some 240km from the closest settlement, Ittoqqortoormiit, which itself is nearly 1,400km from the country’s capital, Nuuk.
Capt Flemming Madsen of the Danish joint Arctic command told Associated Press that the passengers and crew were doing fine and “all I can say is that they got a lifetime experience”.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.
It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.
But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.
The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.
That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.