Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The MS Explorer is sunk. It didn’t take very long for her to go down either; less than 24 hours after she hit some ice and began taking on the frigid waters of Antarctica, she had disappeared from sight.
According to the Associated Press Chilean navy vessels lost sight of the Canadian owned MS Explorer. “Our units in the area aren’t seeing anything” “The Explorer is not visible any longer.”
This isn’t the first time this year that a ship has been in distress in Antarctica. Last February the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling factory ship caught fire, and was dead in the water for 10 days. The Norwegian cruise ship MS Nordkapp ran aground off a a small island in Antartica.
The Nisshin Maru lost one crew. Fire on the whale meat canning ship was steeped in controversy and accusations of terrorism and sabotage. Luckily there was only the loss of one human soul in 3 potentially horrific incidents. All these incidents took place in 9 months leads me to question the sanity of ‘tourism’ in one of the most ecologically precarious places on the planet. 9 months is really a misrepresentation when November to April are the accessible months in the Antarctic.
The fact that ship emissions represent a major portion of global nitrogen and sulfur, both known to contribute to global climate changes, it’s makes no sense to beef up the emissions in Antarctica buy hauling in ship load after ship load of tourists compounding emissions in this vulnerable area.
Emissions aside, accidents just such as the one that befell the Explorer today are environmental disasters waiting to happen. This ship was rated 1A1 ice A with a double hull. What good did that do her?
PSMI at this time doesn’t know how much fuel and what type of fuel the MS Explorer was burning. We’ll try to find more information as the night progresses.
In the mean time…Things aren’t adding up for me.
Labels: Antarctic, Climate Change, Cruise Ships, Global Warming, MS Explorer, Nisshin Maru, Sinking
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Antarctica Takes An Environmental Bullet, the 3rd fired in 9 months. MS Explorer Sinks!
