Another tourist season ends in Antarctica

by Jon Bowermaster on

Hopefully this will be my last update on the 2010-2011 Antarctic tourist season, which is winding down.

Upwards of 35,000 visitors have visited the Peninsula aboard more than 35 different ships. The majority left from Ushuaia, Argentina, and returned there without incident … with a couple notable exceptions … not bad statistics considering they were venturing into one of the more wild corners on the planet.

But each season those couple exceptions remind us just how treacherous the region can be, and just how remote. While tour operators don’t like to see press coverage of Antarctic accidents – tends to scare away potential business – I’m convinced that each accident is both wake-up call and educator for both the public and the industry.

A week ago a competently staffed, veteran icebreaker, “The Polar Star,” hit a rock off Detaille Island, several hundred miles down the Peninsula. Initial reports from the ship were that the incident was minor and a written report from the scene by expedition leader Kris Madden said that although there was a hole in the ship’s hull it was in “no immediate danger.”

But she went on: “It was pretty scary there for a few hours and looked like we would have to abandon ship. In all likelihood we will be transferred to a rescue ship in the area tonight.”Ultimately there was no midnight rescue and the “Polar Star” was able to motor to the South Shetland’s King George Island where – after completion of an underwater inspection — it was decided to offload its 80 passengers onto a trio of other tourist ships in the area. The ship, with crew and staff aboard, then motored across the Drake Passage back to Ushuaia. The rest of its Antarctic season has been canceled, suggesting the repairs will take some time.

Reporting-from-the-scene of these Antarctic incidents is always a bit sketchy. It’s far away, information passes through multi-channels, and the ship companies are not keen for the attention. What the “Polar Star” initially labeled a “breach” in the hull – a tear, a gash, a hole — caused by hitting an “uncharted” rock ultimately turned into something concerning enough that they felt safer offloading its passengers.

(It’s understandably hard to divine the extent of damage while at sea. I was on the scene when the “Explorer” sank off the tip of the Peninsula in November 2007 and the report from its crew was that ice had punched a “fist-sized” hole in the hull. A year later an exhaustive report stated it was more like a 10-foot long gash.)

One very good thing about the continued popularity of Antarctic tourism is that so far whenever one of these incidents has happened there have been other tourist ships within easy reach willing and happy to help.

When the “Clelia II” got in trouble in the Drake Passage in early December, for example – washed over by 35-40 foot waves — the “National Geographic Explorer” was able to change course, locate the disabled ship which had lost its communication system, “launch” it a satellite phone and standby while it recovered.

The aftermath of the “Clelia II”s experience – a railing broken off by the big seas was tossed through the bridge window and the subsequent flooding disabled its communications and forced it to slow its engines – hopefully gave pause to the entire industry.

While early reports from the South American press said the ship had lost an engine, the captain insisted he’d never lost control of the ship. Reports from the docks in Ushuaia after-the-fact suggest there was more damage to the boat than admitted at the time.

The “Clelia II” was not built for Antarctica. It is owned by one company (Helios Shipping, Paraeus, Greece) and its passengers booked by various travel companies (Travel Dynamics International, Overseas Adventure Travel, Wilderness Travel and others). As recently as a month before it went to Antarctica this past season it was doing “fall foliage” trips through the locks of the northern Great Lakes.

Prior to the December it had previous close calls. In September 2010 it lost power in one engine on its way to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and was grounded in calm waters; a year before, on December 26, 2009, it engine power and ran aground off Petermann Island on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The most disconcerting note about the “Clelia II” incident was sent me by “National Geographic Explorer” passenger Amy Gitnick who relayed what passengers were told by her expedition leader: “Apparently the ‘Clelia II’ has Iridium phones on a pre-paid plan and the plan ran out of minutes and so they needed another phone line to reactivate their account.”

Let’s be straight about this: The reason the “Explorer” risked its own 150 passengers and 100 crew in heavy seas mid-Drake Passage was because an Antarctic tourist ship loaded with its own passengers and crew had run out of minutes on its sat phone?

(I have three sat phones, which we use on expedition, and have been charging them and successfully subscribing to them for nearly 15 years.)

The experience of the “Clelia II” – which thankfully resulted only in some bruises for passengers, one injured crewman and some bad press – was, I believe, a wake-up call for Antarctic tourist operators.

For example, a new, 264-passenger luxury ship “Le Boreal,” which was to serve as Abercrombie & Kent’s Antarctic ship this season, canceled at least one planned trip to the Peninsula and spent weeks at the dock in Ushuaia fixing “wear and tear” (a little concerning given that the ship was only put in the water in June). Company spokesman said it had decided to cancel its trip to avoid the potential for problems arising in Antarctica.

If the company hadn’t seen those pictures of a disabled “Clelia II” getting hammered in the Drake I wonder if it might have been so reluctant, given that they were forced to refund a few hundred passengers.

Lindblad Expeditions, the most-veteran Antarctic tourist company, has been taking passengers to the Peninsula for more than 40 years. It provides cautionary words relevant to the “Clelia II’s” experience in its own sales tools.

In a 34-page downloadable brochure titled “6 Questions to Ask Before Choosing your Antarctic Travel Company” it recommends choosing an experienced captain and crew, a ship qualified ship for the conditions and a company that doesn’t just charter a ship but owns it.

(Regarding safety, as well as forward-scanning sonar, double-weather forecasting, an ice light and ice radar, the “National Geographic Explorer” carries, according to the literature, five satellite phones …which the masters of the “Clelia II” might note.)

The brochure is quietly critical of some of the company’s competitors: “More and more cruise lines have added Antarctica to their itineraries. And many tour operators, accustomed to voyaging in ‘tamer’ waters are leasing adventure ships to offer Antarctic voyages, too. Given the increasing numbers of reported ship mishaps in Antarctic waters, it is not hard to conclude too many guests and operators alike may be undertaking this too lightly.”

“We believe that having a ship you control, and a completely coordinated staff and crew is vital for safety reasons … A Cruise Director employed by a leasing travel company coordinating with a Captain and crew who work for a different owner simply cannot produce the teamwork that is the hallmark of our expeditions.”

Each season brings changes to the way tourist operations work along the Peninsula. There are new efforts underway to expand tourism onto the continent, by ship companies offering camping, climbing and diving options as part of their itineraries. To-date those have been considered off-limits for environmental and safety reasons. But demand is growing for the next new thing. Hopefully if those plans proceed there won’t be any operators who view the undertaking “too lightly.”

As of August 2011 new rules adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) will prohibit boats carrying “heavy fuel” from visiting the Peninsula, which means the giant cruise boat traffic – the Princess Cruises, Regents Seven Seas and Crystal Cruises and others – will no longer be able to venture there.

The IMO is also putting pressure on for a mandatory polar code by 2012 that would regulate all ships operating in Arctic and Antarctic waters. The measure is aimed at preventing both tourist ship accidents and sinkings like that of the South Korean fishing trawler that went down in the Ross Sea last December. That crew was not as lucky as those aboard the “Polar Star” or the “Clelia II”; 23 fishermen drowned in the icy Southern Ocean.

Read more from Jon Bowermaster’s Adventures here.

Robots in Antarctica? Closer than you think!

by Jon Bowermaster on

Who could have guessed that Antarctica – the world’s driest desert, where typically it barely snows during the summer months and the sun pounds down with nearly 24/7 predictability from November through February – that this season solar power would be proving a bust.

A Korean snowmobile expedition, hoping to reach the South Pole by machine using batteries charged by the sun, has been stymied by the same weather system that is producing those massive floods in Australia. The resulting heavy cloud cover and the most snow Antarctica has seen in two decades has stalled its efforts.

Options for the Koreans are to abandon and walk to the South Pole, or fill engines with gasoline (more likely), in order to get off the continent before winter sets in.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the crossing of Antarctica by pickup truck as well as the first vehicle to cross Antarctica by bio-fuel, which was judged a success … I guess … though it was followed by massive, six-wheeled, gas-guzzling trucks carrying gear and spare drivers.

Since Australian Douglas Mawson brought the first airplane to Antarctica, and Robert Falcon Scott brought trucks – all of which failed — maybe it’s time to admit that machines don’t belong on the 7th continent at all.
Which even as I type the words I realize is naïve, as each austral season man’s scientific and touristic footprints grow across Antarctica.

How about robots? It’s not far-fetched. The U.S. government is currently building a robot-driven caravan, which it hopes will help ferry fuel and supplies from the coastline base at McMurdo to its base at the South Pole.

The goal? To save human effort and risk and reduce man’s footprint.

The 1,500 mile long supply trip has been done the past two years – thanks to a road bladed by Americans — by a team of ten driving five giant tractors fitted with snowblades and dragging giant bladders of fuel behind. It takes 40 days to reach the South Pole and two weeks to return, obviously burning lots of gasoline in both directions.

The goal is to reduce the numbers of men to two and have the caravan run 24 hours a day, rather than the current 12-hour shift. Operations manager for the U.S. Antarctic Program George Blaisdell says the experimental robotic system, being developed by the NSF with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, should be ready to test later this year.

One current driver, Kristy Carney – who’s done the commute three times – questions how the remotely operated trucks will do in snowstorms and deal with crevasses.

“You get stuck all the time,” she says. “If one gets totally buried (by snowstorms), it will affect the whole line. I don’t know how that would work without enough people to dig it out.”

Maybe it’s time to leave the machines at home and re-introduce dogs to Antarctica; they have been banned since 1991, allegedly for fear of introducing disease to the seal population.

Read more from Jon Bowermaster’s Adventures here.

[Flickr image via rayandbee]

Whale Wars continue — despite Wikileaks

by Jon Bowermaster on

That the Sea Shepherd’s and Japanese whalers are skirmishing again — a recent tête-à-tête included the sling shotting of stink bombs (by the Shepherds) and false attempts to ram (by the Japanese) — the bigger news was the Wikileaks release of conversations between representatives of the U.S. government and their Japanese counterparts about how to shutdown the increasingly popular conservation group.

On the eve of a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in November 2009, a U.S. representative, Monica Medina, apparently broached the idea with senior officials from Japan’s Fisheries Agency of the possibility of revoking Sea Shepherd’s tax-exempt status.

On what basis? According to the leaked cable, first published on Wikileaks website and then in the Spanish daily El Pais, it was because the group “does not deserve tax exempt status based on their aggressive and harmful actions.”

In the past the Japanese have suggested if the Shepherd’s would stop chasing them, they might actually slow down their annual whale hunts. The group’s charismatic leader Paul Watson, for one, doesn’t trust them. “This is not about politics, it’s about economics,” he has said. “They will stop until they realize it is bad business, not because some government tells them to.”

In the cables both governments labeled the conservation group’s annual anti-whaling campaign an “irritant” in international relations.

Contacted by the AP aboard his ship Steve Irwin in the Southern Ocean, you could almost hear the glee in Watson’s reaction to the leaked cables, saying the secret talks proved Sea Shepherd was having an effect.

“We have had our tax status since 1981, and we have done nothing different since then to cause the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to change that,” he said by telephone.

Meanwhile the daily cold war continues off the coast of Antarctica. For the past week the Sea Shepherd ships have been pursuing the Japanese factory ship the Nisshin Maru ever since finding the whaling fleet on December 31st. The pursuit has now covered a thousand miles.

If things continue like this – lots of harassment and engagement, few whales taken, no loss of life or ships and lots of media coverage — the Shepherd’s and Watson will be satisfied. As will the “Whale Wars” camera crews onboard documenting a fourth season.

This season’s campaign motto? “Operation No Compromise.” Watson’s goal is to cause enough distractions to force the whalers to give up and go home. For good.

Read more from Jon Bowermaster’s Adventures here.

[Flickr image via gsz]

Breaking: Antarctic tourist ship “Polar Star” on the rocks

by Jon Bowermaster on

The Antarctic tourist ship “Polar Star” is apparently stable after striking “an uncharted” rock off Detaille Island yesterday, several hundred miles down the Antarctic Peninsula. According to Captain Jacke Majer and a press release from the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) the ship’s outer hull was breeched.

Though free of the rock and reporting no oil leak, its inner hull apparently undamaged, booms were deployed around the ship to mediate any potential spill.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the ship’s passengers are being off-loaded by the Argentine Army.

The South Atlantic News Agency MercoPress reports that the accident happened early Monday in the Matha Strait, north of 67 South, west of the Antarctica peninsula.

“Apparently the cruise vessel ran onto a non-charted rock but managed to pull itself free with no major consequences because of its double hull.

“Any rescue or salvage operation is now in the hands of the Search and Rescue coordination centre in Punta Arenas, Chile, in the framework of the Argentine-Chilean Joint naval Antarctic Patrolling.”

There are 80 passengers and 35 crew aboard the 250-foot-long, Bahamas-flagged ship, which is owned and operated by Halifax-based Karlsen Shipping.

The “Polar Star” departed the tip of South America last week for a ten-day adventure and was expected back at port in Ushuaia, Argentina, on February 6.

Skier sets South Pole speed record

by Kraig Becker on

Norwegian explorer Christian Eide has set a new speed record for traveling to the South Pole on skis, smashing the previous record by more than two weeks and setting a new standard for Antarctic expeditions to follow.

Eide set out from Hercules Inlet, located along the Antarctic coast, on December 20th of last year and proceeded due south towards the Pole, a journey of more than 700 miles. Averaging 29 miles per day over some of the harshest and most extreme terrain on the planet, the skier completed the trip in just 24 days, 1 hour, and 13 minutes, battling whiteout conditions and subzero temperatures along the way.

The previous speed record was held by American Todd Carmichael, who made the same journey back in 2008. Carmichael completed his expedition in 39 days, 7 hours, and 49 minutes, which at the time seemed like a very impressive accomplishment. Eide’s new speed mark raises the bar substantially, and is likely to be a record that will remain unbroken for years to come.

To further put Eide’s accomplishment into perspective, when explorer Roald Amundsen, who was also Norwegian, became the first person to reach the South Pole back in 1911 it took him 58 days to make the journey. He also had the benefit of doing so by dogsled. Now, a century later, we have modern day explorers covering the same distance in less than half the time and under their own power no less.

We’ve come a long way in a hundred years.

[Photo credit: Christian Eide]