Since Tuesday, 200 passengers have been stuck on board a cruise ship in East Greenland. The boat eventually managed to return to sea.
This is an incident that could have ended in tragedy. Fortunately, this will not be the case for the 200 passengers of the Ocean Explorer, whose ship was refloated this morning following a rescue operation by a Greenland Natural Institute vessel.
“The Ocean Explorer was refloated this morning,” announced Arctic Command, a Danish naval unit in Greenland.
“No one on board was injured, the environment was not polluted and the hull did not break,” said Sunstone, owner of the ship.
“The ship did not run aground on rocks, but on sand and mud,” the Arctic Command said. It was these conditions that made it possible to refloat the ship.
An open investigation
Danish police opened an investigation into this landing, which took place in a remote and specially protected region of the vast Arctic territory. The Danish police want to “clarify the circumstances of the crime and determine whether crimes have been committed.”
According to the Australian press, three cases of Covid were also detected on board the ship carrying tourists, although no passenger showed worrying symptoms, stated Brian Jensen, a senior officer in the Danish Navy. The circumstances of the incident are not yet clear. There are few hydrological surveys of the area where the boat ran aground, making it difficult to estimate the depth of the sea.