Sailing the uncharted waters of climate change — literally

A shipping boom in the Arctic is literally sailing into uncharted waters. As ice melts, new routes are opening up, but they haven’t been mapped yet.

It’s putting passengers and the environment at risk. Between 2000 and 2018, 74 vessels have run aground in the Canadian Arctic.

Ed Struzik was on one of them.

“We ran into a shoal very violently, and the ship was lifting,” he said. “We didn’t really know what was going on at the time. We knew that the ship was spilling some fuel and that the ship must have been damaged.”

The passengers were rescued without incident, but it took more than 24 hours for help to arrive.

Struzik joined Climate Cast to talk about the experience and this lesser-discussed consequence of climate change.

Click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast to hear more.