Canada’s transportation safety board to investigate passenger ship grounding in Arctic

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has sent a team of investigators to the Arctic to investigate last week’s grounding of a passenger ship.
The vessel, Akademik Ioffe, run by One Ocean Expeditions, grounded on Friday in the Gulf of Boothia near the community of Kugaaruk in Canada’s eastern Arctic territory of Nunavut.
There were 162 people on board at the time, says the TSB.
All passengers were transferred onto the Akademik Ioffe’s sister vessel, Akademik Sergey Vavilov, by Saturday. There were no injuries and no environmental damage from the incident, said One Ocean Expeditions in a news release.
Passengers returned home Monday
All passengers arrived in Edmonton, Alberta in southern Canada on Monday before flying home, the company said.
The TSB is the body that investigates marine, pipeline, railway and aviation accidents in Canada.
Two of their investigators have already left for the Arctic and are expected to arrive in Kugaaruk on Wednesday. They’re scheduled to board the vessel and start their investigation on Thursday.
One Ocean Expeditions is based in Squamish, British Columbia and specializes in travel to the Arctic and Antarctic. The Akademik Ioffe is described on its website as a 117-metre long, ice class vessel that accommodates 96 passengers and 65 staff and crew.
Write to Eilís Quinn at eilis.quinn(at)cbc.ca
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Finland: Baltic Sea helps Helsinki post record cruise season, YLE News
France: A cruise ship bound for the North Pole, The Independent Barents Observer
Iceland: Arctic tourism in the age of Instagram, Eye on the Arctic
Norway: Several ships being launched to feed Arctic cruise boom, The Independent Barents Observer
Russia: Russia fires up nuclear icebreaker for North Pole cruises, The Independent Barents Observer
United States: Alaska’s cruise industry just keeps getting bigger, Alaska Dispatch News