Vantage Travel’s Ocean Explorer goes into layup; Great Lakes visits canceled
Vantage Deluxe World Travel’s Ocean Explorer and Ocean Odyssey have gone into layup at Caen, France, for an unknown period.
Ocean Explorer visited the Great Lakes in 2022 and had itineraries that included Great Lakes ports for 2023.
SunStone Maritime Group, which charters the two ships to Vantage on a long-term basis, confirmed they arrived at Caen this week carrying no passengers. They had been in service just prior to this.
SunStone’s Niels-Erik Lund said only that Vantage requested the layup, adding his company had not been informed how long it would last. He deferred further questions to Vantage. The Boston-based tour operator did not respond to several requests for information.
Part of SunStone’s China-built Infinity series, Ocean Explorer was delivered in 2021, and sister Ocean Odyssey in 2022. They have been scheduled on far-flung itineraries, from the British Isles to Antarctica, Asia and beyond.
This week, Ocean Explorer’s calls to a region whose spokesperson asked not to be named were canceled into early September.
Read more here: https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/finance/vantage-travels-ocean-explorer-ocean-odyssey-go-layup
Researchers seeing climate change affect ice coverage on Lake Erie LAKE ERIE – Out near Put-in-Bay, Chris Winslow leads scientists from all over the Midwest in freshwater biology research and science education. He’s the director of the Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory and has been studying Lake Erie for more than 20 years. He’s often out on the lake in one of their research vessels.“The vessel’s outfitted to do pretty much anything,” Winslow said. “We can pull nets for fish, we can do sampling for plankton, so the critters living in the water column, we can sample the bottom of the lake.”With the environment warming because of climate change, each winter that comes and goes, he said he’s noticing some drastic fluctuations. This year, Lake Erie, the smallest of the five Great Lakes, had little to no ice coverage. “We’ve had pretty ice-free years before, this is not an anomaly,” Winslow said. “Some years, you might see a lot of ice and the next year, you may see none. And that’s not what we see on the historic record. If you see a high ice year, you’re probably going to see three or four years in a row with high ice. And then if that ice drops off, you might see three or four years of low ice. What we’re seeing with climate change, and how it shows up in the Great Lakes, is just variability from year to year to year.” “Lake Erie, because it’s shallower and warmer than the other Great Lakes, it freezes over more frequently than the other four. So to have an absolute absence of ice is a big deal,” Winslow said. He and his team are already noticing effects on things like erosion and water levels and said as spring approaches, they could see effects on fish hatches and algal blooms. “If you have ice on the lake, you don’t have waves,” Winslow said. “When that ice isn’t there, you have wave action all year round. The other thing is, we know that organisms live underneath that ice. It can be algae and other critters under that ice. And so when they’re there, they’re playing around with the water chemistry by using nutrients. So when that ice isn’t there, those organisms aren’t there. And that affects the chemistry of the lake.” Winslow said ice is just one piece to the puzzle. He said studying Lake Erie is complicated because it affects so many aspects or components of the ecosystem. “We know that underneath ice, you have algae that grow,” he said. “And so those algae are pulling nutrients out of the water, if you don’t have ice, then you don’t have those populations growing underneath the ice and therefore it changes how the nutrients are used in that year, and so all of these things feed in on each other. The nutrients feed into the algae and the algae feed into the tiny bugs and up the food chain. And so anything that you change in that has ripple effects.” Read more at this link: https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2023/05/27/researchers-say-climate-change-impacts-ice-coverage-on-lake-erie
Marine Mart June 10 in Port Huron
Nautical items and Great Lakes marine items bought and sold. See image in the gallery for details.
