Two tales of two ships

Typical. You wait years for a story about a polar research ship, then two come along at once.

After the Boaty Mcboatface (that is, of course, to say the RSS Sir David Attenborough) episode, it now appears that the British Antarctic Survey is in the news again for nautically related reasons. And this time the controversy has some consequence beyond potentially making us the laughing stock of the high-seas. It would appear that they have chartered the RRS Ernest Shackleton, a research support ship, to a private cruise company. Crystal Cruises have paid (no doubt handsomely) BAS so that the Shackleton can accompany their luxury liner – the Crystal Serenity – as she attempts to sail through the famous Northwest Passage in the Arctic. Now, according to the BAS, chartering the Shackleton is not, in its self, unusual. In fact, during the northern summer she is very often commercially chartered, usually working in the North Sea.

The North Sea is one thing, the Northwest Passage is quite another. We are talking here about one of the most delicately balanced environments on the planet. An environment especially vulnerable to global warming and one which, when affected, has global consequences. It is precisely for this reason that we should be proud that BAS has committed to, and I’m quoting their own website now, ‘environmental stewardship of the polar regions’. Which is what makes the irony of the whole thing practically unbearable. What kind of ‘stewardship’ is this precisely? The kind that apparently extends to guiding enormous cruise ships through an area so sensitive, that less than a decade ago it couldn’t even be navigated. That’s right – the Northwest Passage only opened in 2007, due to…you’ve guessed already…melting ice. A situation that raised huge concerns about the speed of global warming. This is like the UN offering armed, protective detail to a tour of an embattled city where the only customers on the trip are the very generals and soldiers laying siege to the area.

And it can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that a fair proportion of the clientele will be booking this cruise (and at a fair old wallop too, $20,000 per berth is the cheapest I could find) with a ‘see it before it’s gone’ mind-set. And I see why’d you want to…hell, I want to. What a spectacular trip it promises to be. What’s more, the cruise company have just managed to include a huge incentive for all those still to get out their wallets – de facto endorsement from the British Antarctic Survey. However, at the time of writing there doesn’t seem to be many dissenting voices on this. Speaking to the BBC’s Matt McGrath, Michael Byers – a professor in global politics and international law from the University of British Columbia – said: “There is a significant tension between the science and environmental mission of the Shackleton and its participation in an exercise in tourism that has an enormous per capita carbon footprint.”

So what were the BAS thinking? There are, perhaps, educational components to this trip – components which may shock the passengers into a more environmentally sound lifestyle. Dubious; and even if that were the case, it’s not enough is it?

If nothing else the BAS must get the sense that when their excellent complement of scientists next publish a report on the dangers of global warming to the Polar Regions, they will have to do so whilst their employers are complicit in one of the causes of those very dangers? Am I reading too much into this? Is it me? Possibly, but at the risk of prompting a rhetorical question, I think it is worth asking yourself the following: Should a publically owned scientific asset be chartered to accompany a privately run cruise to an area of extreme environmental sensitivity? An area, let’s not forget, ordinarily under the protection of that very same scientific asset.

Phil Prime