Liner takes tourist hordes to Antarctica
By Nick Squires in Sydney
(Filed: 05/09/2006)

A giant cruise ship is set to sail into Antarctic waters, changing the face of tourism in the world's great wildernesses.

The Golden Princess, which can carry 3,800 passengers and crew and weighs 109,000 tons, is 10 times bigger than most of the cruise ships which ply Antarctica's seas. Its first voyage in January will herald a new era in the commercial exploitation of the Great White South.

A small boat in the Antarctic
Until now only small ships carrying a few tourists have been landing in Antarctica

"It will alter the whole complexion of Antarctic tourism," said Alan Hemmings, a polar policy specialist at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and an official observer at Antarctic Treaty meetings.

"This will undermine the ethos of small ships and small visitor numbers, which has prevailed until now."

Once the domain of doughty explorers such as Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen, Antarctica is becoming increasingly crowded. An explosion in tourism, an American-built "ice highway" to the South Pole, an air link from Australia and plans to establish more scientific bases are all part of a dramatic rise in human activity.

The number of tourists visiting Antarctica has leapt in the past 15 years from about 5,000 to 30,000.

The arrival of super-liners has prompted fears that in the event of an accident a rescue operation would be all but impossible in such an inhospitable environment.

The Golden Princess
The Golden Princess’s 3,800 passengers will not be exposed to any risk

"A vessel like the Golden Princess is not ice-strengthened and will be operating in a part of the world where there is poor hydrographical information," said Mr Hemmings. "You'd have to try to rescue nearly 4,000 people."

British delegates at an international Antarctic meeting in Edinburgh in June lobbied to prohibit giant liners from the continent.

Mike Richardson, the head of the British delegation, said that if one sank or ran aground it would create an "unthinkable disaster" on the scale of the Titanic or the Exxon Valdez.

Other Antarctic cruise ships are typically former research vessels carrying up to 250 passengers.

Julie Benson, a spokesman for California-based Princess Cruises, said passengers aboard the 210-metre Golden Princess would "absolutely not" be exposed to any risk. The ship was fully equipped for the journey, she said.

"Princess maintains the highest safety standards for all our ships, wherever they may be deployed around the world."

She also denied that the liner would pose any danger to the environment.

In Alaskan waters, in the bays mostly, there are big blocks of ice, chunks of glaciers and such. They would provide no threat to a ship of any size.

But in Antarctica there are icebergs of gigantic size. A friend while on an honest-to-God exploration expedition many years back observed one berg, a floating block which had broken off the Ross Ice Shelf, as "as big as the District of Columbia" (10 miles on a side). There are many such true icebergs in the Antarctic.

Many such blocks are also shown in Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," as they are breaking off more frequently at this time.

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Originally posted by annnthony:
The Golden Princess pax. capacity is 2600, not 3800!

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3,800 is total capacity, pax plus crew, as the original article stated.

[ 09-05-2006: Message edited by: greybeard ]

Also, the Marco Polo is actually already quite large if not too large for a reasonalbe operation in this region.

[ 09-05-2006: Message edited by: Ernst ]

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Originally posted by Cambodge:
Sutho: A naive observation.

. . . in Antarctica there are icebergs of gigantic size. A friend while on an honest-to-God exploration expedition many years back observed one berg, a floating block which had broken off the Ross Ice Shelf, as "as big as the District of Columbia" (10 miles on a side). There are many such true icebergs in the Antarctic.

.

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Originally posted by Cambodge:
...many years back observed one berg, a floating block which had broken off the Ross Ice Shelf, as "as big as the District of Columbia" .

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Say she caught fire of Antarctica.. sprung a leak? anything.. who is there to assist? No-one; unlike in Alaska waters. Are Princess going to equip her with sufficient cold water life jackets? Presumably they are 'testing' the waters. The pax booked on this trip can afford a proper trip to the area, on a more suitable vessel... so why on earth a Grand Class ship?

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Originally posted by Frosty 4:
I'm not sure which is closer to Antartica -Australia or Chile(Horn) .
Frosty 4

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Originally posted by Pascal:
You can be sure Chile is much closer : only 580 nautical miles from South America mainland to Antartica mainland, compared to 1400 nm from Tasmania or NZ.

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Originally posted by PamM:
Say she caught fire of Antarctica.. sprung a leak? anything.. who is there to assist? No-one; unlike in Alaska waters. Are Princess going to equip her with sufficient cold water life jackets?

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This itinerary does not appear to actually hit the mainland, but outter islands?

http://www.princess.com/pb/itineraryDetails.do?voyageCode=5703&date=&noOfPax=2& definition_name=

The furthest it goes is Deception Island...

http://www.monolith.com.au/Deception_Island/map.gif

This...

http://www.antarcticaonline.com/antarctica/photos/photoant.htm

...SHOULD be protected.

Antarctica is not a scientific curiosity but a key part of planet Earth. Processes taking place there affect the world's climate and its oceans, and link the continent to all corners of the globe. In understanding climate change, the Antarctic plays a crucial role. The ice sheet preserves a climate and pollution record spanning the last half million years. Important too is current evidence of ozone depletion in the stratosphere, warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, and how the ice sheet may contribute to changes in sea level.

SOURCE: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/About_Antarctica/index.html

Antarctica does not have gift shops! and it should stay that way...

[ 09-05-2006: Message edited by: dmwnc1 ]

[ 09-05-2006: Message edited by: Brian_O ]

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Originally posted by dmwnc1:
I just cant see 2800 passengers chasing around protected wildlife in this fragile eco-system with their digital cameras and drinking hot chocolate and split-pea soup.

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Originally posted by PamM:
... so why on earth a Grand Class ship?

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Absolutely! It's not as if Princess are even passing the 'economies of scale' of a big ship (Thousands of cabins) onto the passengers. This is an expensive cruise!

[ 09-06-2006: Message edited by: Malcolm @ cruisepage ]

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Originally posted by RobHolland:
It really should be no safety-related problem to visit Antarctica with this kind of ship on this specific itinerary, as they don't really go far down south.

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Originally posted by timb:
Rouge Waves can happen nearly everywhere.

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Originally posted by Malcolm @ cruisepage:

So cruising in Antarctica is no more risky in terms of rouge waves anyway.

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To get to Antarctica one has to go trough a very stormy region - so the probability is maybe a bit higher - but as said above - rogue waves are not limited to this region.

I can only guess that the Golden Princess will stay away from the more risky regions - e.g. uncharted shallow waters (mind you that the small expeditions ships run aground form time to time) - also she will probably avoid the ice (the big icebergs should not be an issue - also a ship with an ice strengthened hull has to avoid them - such a big ship might be limited in manouvrability (shallow water etc.) - so I guess they will stay away from such critical areas) - and one can only hope that they will not bring thousands of passengers ashore - which leads to the question why they are going there with such a ship firstplace.