Freed Cruise Ship Shows Risks of More Traffic in Remote Arctic
Help can be slow to arrive in the vast polar region, where marine traffic has increased significantly as melting ice opens up new routes.
The grounding of a luxury cruise ship off the coast of Greenland on Monday highlighted the irony of touring the fast-warming Arctic on vessels powered by fossil fuels, the main culprit in climate change. But the incident also underscores the recent growth of marine traffic in the region, a trend that raises the risk of accidents and pollution in hard-to-reach places.
Global warming is destroying vast tracts of polar ice, opening previously frozen sea routes through the Arctic for longer periods. In the case of Greenland — where the Ocean Explorer was mired in glacial silt in a remote fjord before finally being freed Thursday — cruise ship traffic has risen 50% in the last year, to about 600 ships, according to Brian Jensen of the Danish military’s Joint Arctic Command.