This past weekend's grounding of the Clipper Adventurer cruise ship near Kugluktuk, Nunavut, underlines the inadequate charting of Arctic waters, a leading Canadian ice expert told the Nunatsiaq News.
This is the "single biggest issue in the Arctic,'' said John Falkingham, a sea ice consultant, in an Aug. 30 interview with from Ottawa.
Charts are supposed to tell navigators the safest routes to take. But only about 10 per cent of Arctic waters are charted to modern-day standards, and it will take 300 years to complete the job at the current rate, said Falkingham, who worked with the Canadian Ice Service for nearly 30 years.
In the meantime, annual surveys of certain areas are done every year, but they're limited in scope, he said.
"They can only progress at a rate that's not fast enough for the industry that's going in there, particularly the cruise industry, which tends to want to go to different areas,'' he said. ``They don't want to stick with sea lanes- that's boring.''
The Clipper Adventurer, operated by Mississauga, Ont.-based Adventure Canada, hit a rock in about three metres of water, about 100 kilometres east of Kugluktuk, in western Nunavut, on Aug. 27.
Its passengers and crew, said to be safe and unharmed, were transferred to the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen and brought to Kuglukuk from where they were flown by charter to Edmonton, some 1,800 kilometres to the south.
The grounding of the Clipper Adventurer is not the first time a cruise ship has run aground in Arctic waters, Falkingham pointed out.
Ten years ago there was a similar occurrence in Nunavut, which also took place in late August.
On Aug. 29, 1996, while en route from Gjoa Haven to Resolute Bay, the cruise ship Hanseatic, with 149 passengers aboard, ran aground in Simpson Strait.
According to a Transport Canada investigation into the incident, the weather was fine and clear and the vessel was being navigated visually, by reference to shore ranges, and by radar.
The Transportation Safety Board determined that the Hanseatic grounded because the bridge team did not strictly adhere to the plan that had been prepared for navigating the vessel through the strait. Relying on a buoy left in the strait from the previous navigation season contributed to the grounding.
Another vessel, the cruise ship Disko-11, went aground off Greenland in June 2007, after it ventured into uncharted waters, hitting rocks near the island of Qeqertarsuaq, with 52 Danish passengers on board and a crew of 18.
Neither of the cases resulted in sinking or danger.
"The potential (for loss of life) is there, and that's the problem. But if a grounding happened and simultaneously some severe weather came along, high winds, high waves - that could really complicate things,'' Falkingham said.
To avoid disaster, Canada needs to improve legal issues around charting and how these maps are done. For example, private companies that do their own surveys and produce charts - such as gas and oil developers - aren't required to share the information with the Canadian Hydrographic Service, the agency that carries out mapping surveys and publishes paper and electronic nautical charts of Canada's waters.
As well, current regulations don't take into account new kinds of technology which could allow all ships to map the sea bottom as they go - technology such as the forward-looking sonar used by icebreakers, used by the Amundsen.
