A Green Blog Visits Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise Boat

This is one of the articles that I have been most pleased to write since visiting the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise has been one of the best experiences I have had.

The Arctic Sunrise ship is one of three vessels owned by the environmental association Greenpeace, the other two are the Rainbow Warrior II and the Esperanza, which are used for research and awareness campaigns on environmental and biodiversity issues around the world.

To visit the Arctic Sunrise, which is anchored on the island of Cozumel to support the COP16 climate change summit in Cancun, we had to travel from Playa del Carmen on a Ferry, which gave us the opportunity to appreciate an exceptional view of the boat from the sea, you can see in the photo gallery in this post.

The boat is not very big, but it is quite old and with a great history, which we had the opportunity to hear from Greenpeace volunteers while they gave us a tour of the ship.

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The Arctic Sunrise is an icebreaker, to which it owes its rounded shape at the tip, since in this way the boat climbs on the ice sheets and with the weight it breaks them. This ship operated from 1975 to 1995 as a seal hunting boat, an activity totally opposed to the environmental values of the association to which it now belongs.

In 1995 Greenpeace took on the task of trying to acquire the boat from the fishing company, to which the company refused on the grounds that it preferred to sink the boat before selling it to Greenpeace. To which Greenpeace responded with a very clever strategy. He created a company called Arctic Sunrise Ventures that was the one who acquired the company's ship; when the ship was already owned by Arctic Sunrise Ventures, Greenpeace unmasked its true identity, leaving seal hunters unable to do anything about it.

Since then the environmental organization has taken on the task of "cleaning up the karma" of the ship, devoting its efforts to environmental and social awareness activities.

The ship has a fixed crew of 15 people of 11 different nationalities, the captain of the ship is English. On a past trip the crew had a Mexican as a kitchen assistant, one of the key positions in a ship crew, along with the engineers, since it feeds the entire crew for up to 4 months at sea.

It measures 49.62 meters long and 11.5 meters wide, travels at a maximum speed of 12 knots, weighs 949 tons and has 4 boats on board.

The Arctic Sunrise has participated in various tasks and campaigns in its 14 years as part of Greenpeace, among them are the documentation of the effects of climate change in Antarctica, the Arctic and Alaska, stop the projects of oil companies such as British Petroleum (BP), stop whaling by Japan, curb illegal fishing by chasing pirate ships in Patagonia, and has prevented U.S. nuclear missile tests, among many other global warming awareness actions.

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The vessel recently participated in a Gulf of Mexico cleanup effort in Veracruz to help reverse some of the damage caused by the BP oil spill.

After Cozumel the boat will go to Isla Mujeres to collaborate in reef protection work and from there it will sail to the Bahamas where maintenance work will be carried out on the ship and the crew can spend Christmas and New Year.

Something very interesting about the boat is that it has a helipad, and although it is an old ship has all the technology to navigate the seas without harming nature, for example it has a system that allows you to calculate how much space there is between the bottom of the boat and the sea surface, this serves not to hit rocks and not damage the reefs.

In the deepest part of the ship there is a hold, in which are all the tools for the maintenance of the boat, food and emergency equipment. In this part there is also the recreation area, where the crew exercise, play darts, play ping pong and exercise with an elliptical machine and ropes to rappel.

In the Arctic Sunrise, the crew takes the sea water, desalinates it and uses it for bathing, washing dishes and clothes and other basic necessities, then gives it treatment to return it to the sea cleanly. Similarly, on the ship, waste is separated and inorganic garbage is taken to recycling centers when the ship reaches land, and organic waste is safely dumped at sea so as not to affect marine biodiversity.

Visiting the Arctic Sunrise has been an unparalleled and highly recommended experience, so if you have the opportunity to visit any of the three Greenpeace ships do not miss it, you will not regret it, and it is worth supporting the projects of this organization with our donations.