Calls for tourism safeguards after cruise ship sinks

A report in The Press in New Zealand says that the sinking of the MV Explorer cruise ship in Antarctic waters has reinforced the need for safeguards on the rapidly expanding tourist trade, say New Zealand officials.

The Explorer hit an iceberg off King George Island in the Drake Passage, between Antarctica and the southern tip of South America, on Friday, leaving its 100 passengers and 54 crew – including two New Zealanders – drifting in lifeboats in sub-zero temperatures.

GAP Adventures, the Canadian tour company which ran the cruise, would not name the New Zealand crew members. All passengers and crew were rescued from the freezing waters after several hours by a Norwegian cruise liner, which carried them to Chile’s Antarctic Eduardo Frei base.

Most of the passengers were flown to the southern tip of Chile yesterday. The remainder were taken to King George Island. They will be airlifted to Chile when the weather clears.

Some of the shipwrecked holidaymakers, still clutching lifejackets, boarded a military aircraft during the weekend, and left Antarctica to begin long journeys home.

“I thought the ship was going down,” Eli Charne, 38, of California, recalled of the moments after he felt the ship hit the ice. “We were on the lowest deck of the ship, so we rushed out of the room and pressed the emergency button as water rushed in.”

Another passenger, Dane Jan Henkel, 42, was “very pleased to be alive”. “Everybody was afraid to die, I think,” he said.

However, he joked that he and wife-to-be Mette Larsen, 29, planned to “go to a warmer place” for their honeymoon.

Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said from Scott Base yesterday that the Explorer — a ship he had worked on for 10 years – pioneered Antarctic tourism.

He said its double-skin, ice-strengthened hull was surprisingly holed by what could have been a “growler” – a large, heavy piece of hard ice sitting below the water surface.

Sanson said the Antarctic tourism industry was growing at about 10 per cent a year, with 21 cruise ships in Antarctic waters this year.

He said many did not have the double-skin hull or ice-class rating that the Explorer had, and some carried up to 2000 people.

An Antarctic Treaty agreement in May, backed by New Zealand, limited vessels which landed on the ice to 500 passengers. Signatory countries had to enshrine that limit in their laws, and Sanson expected that process could be accelerated by the accident.

He said it would also focus further attention on safety responses in the area.

The Antarctic Peninsula, where the Explorer foundered, was by far the most popular tourist destination because it was only 36 hours sailing from Argentina.

The Ross Sea, where New Zealand is based, had only about 600 tourists a year.

Sanson said New Zealand had recently completed a ship-grounding rescue exercise with the rescue co-ordination centre, the Defence Force and the US Antarctic programme.

“It’s something we are very focused on; how we prevent these types of disasters,” he said.

The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, an international environmental organisation, said the accident involving a well-tested ice-strengthened vessel highlighted the dangers tourism posed to the fragile marine environment from larger, less suitable ships.

However, Shirley Russ, who runs New Zealand’s only Antarctic tourism venture with her husband, Rodney, said she hoped the accident would not cause a “knee-jerk reaction” to tighten tourism rules.

“Let’s hear what comes out as time progresses about what happened to the Explorer and then see whether something needs to be done,” she said.

The Russes’ company, Heritage Expeditions, takes 50 passengers to east Antarctica and the Ross Sea ice in chartered ships from Bluff.

A Report by The Mole from The Press