Remember this? The ill-fated “Spirit of Mawson” expedition to Antarctica (in the Akademik Shokalskiy) that set out to bring attention to “global warming” only to be trapped in ice?
It’s deja vu all over again. (with h/t to Yogi Berra)
We have another winner! This time in the Arctic.
A few weeks ago I covered this:
Student propaganda cruise to the Arctic to be carried by webcast
From August 23 to Sept. 13, the University of Rhode Island’s Inner Space Center (ISC), with major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and additional support from the Heising-Simons Foundation, will conduct the innovative Northwest Passage Project research expedition with a team of natural and social scientists, students, and a professional film crew. This ground-breaking opportunity is also supported by One Ocean Expeditions as a key marine partner, having operated in Arctic waters for over 20 years.
Research to aid understanding of / document climate change effects
Aboard the Akademik Ioffe, the team will collect water, ice, and air samples to advance understanding of and document the effect climate change is having on the environment and biodiversity in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
…
The expedition team will engage a wide public audience through an extensive and unprecedented Internet presence from the area, including Facebook Live broadcasts from sea. Special interactive broadcasts will be beamed via the Inner Space Center (ISC), the U.S. facility that supports ocean exploration and education, to three prestigious science museums across the country – the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, the Exploratorium, San Francisco CA, and the Alaska SeaLife Center, Seward AK.
Then predictably, this happened according to the Facebook page of the tour company, One Ocean Expeditions Inner Space Center:
On the morning of August 24th, the Akademik Ioffe — the vessel carrying the participants of the National Science Foundation funded Northwest Passage Project being conducted by the University of Rhode Island — became grounded in the western Gulf of Boothia in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The ship has since been re-floated, and following a full and successful systems check the vessel has repositioned to anchor. We are happy to report that all passengers, including all Northwest Passage Project participants, are safe and are being well cared for. We will provide updates as we resolve the situation.
Then the Canadian Coast Guard service had this to say:
Good morning, Due to heavier than normal ice concentrations in the Canadian arctic waters north of 70 degrees, the Canadian Coast Guard, recommends that pleasure craft do not navigate in the Beaufort Sea, Barrow, Peel Sound, Franklin Strait and Prince Regent. CCG icebreakers cannot safely escort pleasure craft. Operators of pleasure craft considering a northwest passage should also consider the risk of having to winter in a safe haven in the Arctic, or in the case of an emergency, be evacuated from beset vessels. Safety of mariners is our primary concern. REGARDS, NORDREG CANADA 181256UTC\LR
And then, comes the familiar evacuation plan:
25 Aug 2018 – KUGAARUK, Nunavut – Cpl. Serge Yelle of the RCMP detachment says he expects between 80 and 90 of the passengers will fly from the remote Arctic coastline community back to Yellowknife.
The Transportation Safety Board is considering whether it will send investigators to the site.
A board spokesman says the ship has suffered some damage.
On its website, the tour operator – One Ocean Expeditions – describes the 117-metre Akademik Ioffe as a “modern, comfortable, safe and ice-strengthened” vessel that can host 96 passengers and 65 staff and crew.
Passengers on grounded Arctic cruise ship to be flown back to Yellowknife
It seems global warming zealots are condemned to repeat the past, over and over again.
Of course, despite their claims of “unprecedented Internet presence from the area” not a word of any of this on the official project page. The last entry was on August 22nd headlined: Getting there is half the fun
If only they’d checked first…per the Canadian Coast Guard report, sea ice volume is above normal, according to DMI:
Extent remains a bit below normal:
NOTE: About 15 minutes after publication, the title was changed from “stuck” to “grounded” to be more in-tune with news reports. However, since we so far have no photos of the grounding, we don’t know if it was a grounding by ice, or by land to avoid ice. Either way, since the ship is now damaged, the expedition is a bust.
If this keeps happening we could make a datum chart and use it at presentations.
Chart caption: C02 causes increase in ship strandings in icy waters.
It’s another ‘hockey stick’!
“between 80 and 90 of the passengers will fly” In a fossil fuel burning aircraft, not an electric one. Ok, roger that.
Gee, I love my job 😉
Is ‘Ice Pilots’ still showing? Pile them all into that L188!
I would rather envision a type with a bomb bay. Then log the event as in-flight malfunction.
Are they being billed full airfare? If this is government funding, then an equivalent amount with penalty should be cut from budgets.
In August 2010 my wife and I had booked passage through the NWP west to east from Kuglutuk (Coppermine) – in 2009 we had made the transit from east to west. Enroute to boarding the ship we were informed in Edmonton that the trip was cancelled because the ship “Clipper Adventurer” had run aground 200 kms east of Coppermine.
This was a true grounding on a shelf over which the ship’s depth finder suddenly went from 50 meters to 3.
As an aside, there was lots of sea ice in the passage during our initial transit and the ship’s course had to be changed several times.These waters are not well charted and we had been told by the captain on our original transit that he had tried several times to present charting information to Canadian authorities who were not interested in his input.
Send Al Gore up there with his flamethrower.
The arctic pack ice is thick this summer… and so are the dolts on the One Ocean Expeditions Akademik Ioffe.
Brings a modern meaning to the old movie “Ship of Fools”.
Like socialism and communism … success is around the corner
“a team of natural and social scientists” – what possible reason would social scientists have to be doing Arctic research? I am relying on you all for some amusing responses.
Tricky stuff that navimagation. The ground keeps moving around , especially the white ground.
They never learn.
Grounded or stuck – If the Northwest Passage is navigable, why must the snowflakes be rescued by aircraft? Why not send in a few swift boats to retrieve them? Hey?
Well they did send a boat to pick them up but it took 16 hrs for it to reach them.
Then they had to be transported between the ships:
Almost certainly the captain erred in running aground. It’s not unlikely that a captain who was more experienced in those waters might have also been astute enough to say “Sorry, but it’s irresponsible to take a sight-seeing tour in a ship that size into these waters. There’s always an ice hazard, even in late summer.”
The wording on the side of the ship is fake, right?
Yes. Of course.
Phony Cyrillic.
Why would it be important to have social scientists on board the research vessel? I think we should find out if it ran aground or if they are lying about. Alinsky rules and all that.
Where is Griff and Tony McLeod to tell us the ice is gone?
Average temps above the 80th northern parallel just fell below -2C (the freezing point of ocean water) so ice extents will soon start expanding rapidly, and existing sea ice will start getting thicker:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
If they don’t get that stranded vessel out soon, it could be stuck there for the duration of the winter..
It’s interesting to note that since Arctic Ice Extents bottomed out in 2007, 8 out of the past 11 years, Summer Arctic Ic Minimums have been higher than 2007…
Leftists predicted that CAGW would cause Summer Arctic Ice Minimums to fall below 1 MILLION KM^2 by 2100… not so much.
This year’s Minimum Ice Extent will be just below 6 million KM^2… oops..
And yet the Leftist MSM continue to write bogus stories about Arctic Ice Extents rapidly disappearing, which lead to yet another “Ship of Fools” incident…
When the PDO/AMO/NAO are all in their respective 30-year cool cycles from around 2020, Arctic Sea Ice will gradually continue to recover…
I can’t wait to see MSM stories about Global Warming is causing Arctic Ice Extents to increase…
No “New” news on their website today. (see link above).
Expedition Update
The ship carrying the Northwest Passage Project’s expedition participants, the Akademik Ioffe, ran aground in the high Canadian Arctic on August 24, 2018. There were no injuries and all expedition participants are safe. The ship was quickly refloated but needs repair. All passengers were safely transferred to shore and returned home. The expedition is postponed to summer 2019.
It is absolutely amazing that a cruise vacation can be rebranded a “scientific voyage” I checked the webpage for the cruise ship company: $9,995 per passenger. Not only are these kids stupid, apparently their parents are too.
All:
Now remember, the many hundreds of kilometers of the much-sought-for Northwest Passage lie through the narrow, wind and storm-swept, twisting little passageways between the many hundred islands of the archipelago.
he Northwest Passage is NOT through wide area of open Arctic waters – those more open areas are blocked up by the millions of sq kilometers (even at time of minimum sea ice in mid-September) that are blown against the island by the prevailing winds from Siberia up and across the pole. So the hazards of the passage that MUST be recognized limit when a ship can get through:
When the sea ice is NOT blown against the north coast of the NW Territory and Alaska.
When the Bering Strait and Bering Sea are themselves open – July-October are pretty much always open though.
When the few deep-water channels that are wide enough to pass shipping safely between the islands are not blocked by sea ice – This is the most limiting.
And, as we have seen the past few years, they cannot guarantee when these passages will be open, and for how long which ones will be open. A ship waiting for one blocked channel to open cannot necessarily get around the islands to another channel that did open for a few hours.
So, a merchant in Europe or the US must “gamble” when he orders a ship to take the passage from China to Rotterdam or England or new Jersey or Savanah that the ship will leave China early enough to anticipate the limited three or four weeks of “open channels”, arrive when the channel is actually open (they lose money waiting to the ice to clear or storms to abate!), then get through, then get past the rest of the re-freezing sea ice west of Greenland (or north of Greenland, if they take that route) to get to the final port.
Any delays, any groundings or equipment failures or storm surges pushing the hull onto the rocks or shoals (most NOT charted by the way!) will destroy the ship and merchandise. Helicopters “might” be able to get the crew, but the containers are lost.
I do not believe the Northwest Passage will ever be profitable.
The Northeast Passage – across north Siberia to China form Europe? That might be more useful. Certainly the way is easier, further from the coast and the sea ice is being blown away from the coast most of the year.
“the Akademik Ioffe — the vessel carrying the participants of the National Science Foundation”
Hello?
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:349703/mmsi:273413400/imo:8507731/vessel:AKADEMIK_IOFFE
Anyone remembers that John Brennan is a liberal hero (*), Donald Trump is a “traitor”, and Russia is the enemy? Hello?
Sanctions? Remember? Putin bad? Don’t ever have any relationship with Russians?
(*) A hack-hero which is a thing apparently:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/brennan-is-a-hack-trump-shouldnt-have-made-him-a-hero/2018/08/21/74af846c-a556-11e8-97ce-cc9042272f07_story.html
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Russian sanctions? Rings a bell?
“Academics cruising on Akademiks” a recipie for comedy.
Anthony said:
“NOTE: About 15 minutes after publication, the title was changed from “stuck” to “grounded” to be more in-tune with news reports. However, since we so far have no photos of the grounding, we don’t know if it was a grounding by ice, or by land to avoid ice. Either way, since the ship is now damaged, the expedition is a bust.”
You also don’t know if either of those are true. The English managed to rip the bottom out of one of their navy ships just off Lord Howe Island in 2002, on a rock that has been on the charts for around 120 years.
Probably a good idea to verify what actually happened before kicking off the gloating.
RN has been the British Navy since 1707 of course. At least nobody died. USN has made a few fatal navigation errors recently. The sea is an unforgiving environment as is a Court Martial as Admiral Byng discovered to his cost.
‘The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.’ Joseph Conrad
British Naval ships were prone to major structural bottom hull damage, until they clad their bottoms with copper. Problem? Was a wood boring worm.
Every ship in those tropical waters was affected by Teredo navalis, only RN had the resources at the time to become ‘copper bottomed’. That caused its own problems because of bimetallic corrosion of the iron hull fastenings which all had to be changed too. See also Muntz metal a cheaper alternative used on ‘Cutty Sark’.
‘Ah! little ken’d thy reverend grannie,
That sark she coft for he wee Nannie,
Wi’ twa pund Scots, (’twas a’ her riches),
Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches!’
Where is Reggie and his blowlamp when you need him
I happen to be familiar with this class of ship, and they are good, seaworthy vessels with experienced crews.
It seems likely that the grounding is due to the same factors as the “ship of fools” incident, i. e. incompetent expedition leaders intent on following plans and refusing to make allowance for local conditions. Always a recipe for disaster in the Arctic.
Ice conditions in this area are bad this year. Probably the ship deviated from the usual route in order to get through the ice, something that is quite risky since these waters are very inadequately mapped.
The official project page does mention the incident now.
https://northwestpassageproject.org/