The New Northwest Passage: Tourism through the Arctic

Posted on September 17, 2019 Updated on September 16, 2019

By Lauren Maddox

At the beginning of the summer, I did a series of posts discussing some of the AGSL’s connections to Arctic exploration and the famous explorers of that age (or, more accurately, the scandalous love lives of those explorers). But the Northwest Passage is still a part of the public’s romantic imagination– it’s a largely untraversable and unexplored wild full of cold beauty. And the fact that a Northwest Passage has been a geographical mystery for so many generations of Western explorers doesn’t hurt. As shrinking sea ice opens new routes through the storied Northwest Passage, more and more ships are passing through. Shipping freights are taking advantage of the new possible alternative to the Panama Canal for pan-oceanic travel– but in 2016, the first cruise ship passed through the Northwest Passage on a 28-day cruise through the Arctic.

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The Northwest Passage has been the subject of years of conjecture and speculation for European travelers–there is even some evidence that Vikings traveled to the Arctic and traded with indigenous peoples before the Little Ice Age. Early attempts to discover a true Northwest Passage were spearheaded the English; Henry VII sent John Cabot on a search for a direct route to Asia that could be used for more open trading in 1497. Several later explorers followed suit: Estaban Gomez in 1524, Martin Frobisher in 1576, Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, and on and on into the next two centuries.

Explorers were also interested in finding alternative entry routes into the Passage– if they couldn’t traverse the Northwest Passage in its entirety, then maybe they could find another way onto the path. In 1539, Francisco De Ulloa embarked on an expedition to sail around the Baja California Peninsula– you might remember this from my July post about the island of California. Besides confirming the fact that California is indeed an island (just kidding), Ulloa also believed that the strait between California and the mainland would lead to an accessible Northwest Passage.

Many of these expeditions ended in tragedy– the truth was, at the time, there was no reliable pathway through the ice for ships to take. Routes that might be clear in one season would be completely frozen in another. Ships would often become stuck in the ice and forced to winter over where they were or abandon ship. In the 19th century, another rush of Arctic exploration swept Europe and the United States. In an earlier post, I go into some detail about the lost Franklin expedition and the scramble to discover their fate. This was one tragic ending of many expeditions– even Elisha Kent Kane’s rescue expedition in search of Franklin ended in a narrow escape from the deadly winter after which Kane’s health never recovered. Many thought that a purely ship-based expedition would never be possible; John Rae, the man who discovered the true fate of Franklin and his men, made many overland expeditions exploring the continent by using techniques already honed by native peoples who had managed to live there since, well, before the Vikings came to trade with them.

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The Northwest Passage would prove impenetrable by ship until 1906, when Roald Amundsen and his six-person crew made a three-year journey through the icy waters in a tiny herring boat. His route through the Rae Strait was full of fairly young ice that was navigable and breakable, but the waters were shallow and only a small boat like the Gjøa could have made the trip.

As time passed and our climate has changed, the sea ice that prevented so many travelers from passing through the Northwest Passage has been shrinking. The Earth’s poles are more susceptible to the effects of climate change, and so the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world. The sea ice normally freezes and melts throughout the year, but the maximum coverage of the ice in winter has been shrinking at an alarming rate. This has some pretty huge implications for the state of our world, but has also led to an uptick in arctic tourism.

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Because of the melting sea ice, larger boats can pass through the Northwest Passage. During the most recent Arthur Holzeimer Lecture at the AGSL, speaker Lauren Beck commented that, for the first time in history, the Northwest Passage of European imagination has become reality. Only because of the quickly degrading sea ice is the Northwest Passage actually a traversable ship passage.

Amundsen’s successful trip through the Northwest Passage did not turn it into an icy thoroughfare– the ice was still too much of a problem for large cargo ships and the water often dangerously shallow. In 2012, two astonishing events happened: arctic sea ice hit record lows, and ship passage through the Northwest Passage hit record highs. The Panama-Canal was still the better, more consistent choice for trans-ocean shipments, but the new open waterways inspired a different kind of ship-traffic.

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In 2016, the Crystal Serenity made an unprecedented voyage through the Northwest Passage; though not the first, it was the largest cruise ship to ever pass through the Northwest Passage. The cruise ship had to be escorted by a Polar-Grade ship that could break the ice for the cruise ship to pass though– or perform a rescue. While Crystal Cruises proudly took the Serenity through the Northwest Passage on multiple voyages for “true explore[s]” and is expecting the delivery of a Polar-Grade ship for more cruises, there is some concern about what tourism in the Arctic really means.

For one thing, the communities living there don’t have the infrastructure to deal with the influx of people and garbage. Townships are overwhelmed even by limited groups of tourists visiting. And the effect that human interference has on local flora and fauna– never mind the impending catastrophic oil or fuel spill that seems inevitable with increased traffic– can have deadly consequences for local indigenous communities.

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For many people, Arctic tourism is a “last-chance” to see an environment that might be on the brink of destruction. And while it is true that experiencing the Arctic has inspired many to defend it from climate destruction, the increased number of ships creates an increased risk of disaster for the environment, the people who live there, and even the tourists themselves. But ignoring the real possibility of climate disaster (or a shipwreck stranding hundreds of tourists on the Arctic Ocean), Arctic tourism also has a troubling philosophical component. Last-chance tourism forces us to think about the destruction of our natural world and how we want to face it. Do we want to put it at potential risk for the chance that tourists become potential activists? Or do we protect it from commercial interference as long as possible?

The answers to these questions are unclear, but as the Arctic tourism industry grows, the search for answers becomes more urgent.