An insurance dispute forced the postponement of last year’s leg of the Arctic Expedition, but the organisers of the scientific and artistic voyage have new ship that will allow it to go on
Pacifique, a Switzerland-based conservancy, will be headed back to the Arctic this summer to continue its five-year circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean after a dispute with its insurer forced the organisation to suspend last year’s leg of the research voyage it began in 2020.
This year’s leg of the Arctic Expedition will be able to go ahead after Pacifique hired in the 16-metre Que Sera, an aluminium-hulled vessel it says is better adapted to sailing in the Arctic than the 24-metre, steel-hulled Mauritius.
The Mauritius had been wintering in Disko Bay, Greenland in 2022, when Pacifique was informed that it could not be insured to sail above 60 degrees north, despite having been prepared for the voyage by a skipper with experience sailing in the Antarctic, according to Stephanie Stiernon, the head of Pacifique.
With the insurance question settled, Ms Stiernon felt confident that the expedition would resume this year.
“There are some figures that have come out: 20% of the time the ice doesn’t open, that’s still an unknown,” she said. But everything points to the fact that this summer, the passage will be open to sailing.
Currently en route to Newfoundland, where it will prepare for the expedition, the Que Sera is due to head north to Greenland in June. From there, it will turn west, traversing the Northwest Passages before ending the voyage in southern Alaska, where it will likely overwinter.
Normally, Pacifique voyages host troubled teenagers on a break from school. The first two legs of the Arctic Expedition, however, had proven “a bit extreme for most of the young people”, according to Ms Stiernon, so this year’s leg will involve only scientists and artists.
For the scientists, the voyage is an opportunity to get valuable data.
One of those looking forward to the voyage getting underway again is Daniel McGinnis, an oceanographer with Université de Genève. A participant on previous legs, he will not be taking part this year, but the resumption means he will be able to continue the greenhouse-gas measurements he stopped in 2022, when the Mauritius arrived on the western coast of Greenland.
In his place this year will be the students he has placed in charge of collecting and sending gas samples to the laboratory and looking after the atmospheric sensors; exciting field work for early-career researchers.
“There are currents in the Arctic that come up with water that is low in carbon levels, and it absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere once it reaches the surface,” Mr McGinnis said. The data will show where these mechanisms take place and conversely perhaps detect sources, as during the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano when they were travelling along Iceland two years ago.
Also aboard the Que Sera will be a women’s polar expedition that is seeking to document the contributions of Inuit and Canadian women to Arctic exploration. Taking part will be: Jessica Houston, a painter and photographer; Okalik Eegeesiak, a specialist in Inuit governance; and Noémie Planat, an atmospheric scientist.
“They want to build an artistic and scientific narrative of the women explorers who sailed in these regions, while working with the local people they will meet,” Ms Stiernon said. The yacht will also host artists-in-residence who are participating in the Sillages project, a series of poetic and drawn publications since the beginning of the expedition.
Camille Lin, PolarJournal
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