Viking Octantis and Viking Polaris, named for the southern and northern stars, are touring the Great Lakes this year, with stops in Alpena and in various other ports along the way. These are a different kind of cruise ship, with multiple goals, including scientific research and education.

On Wednesday, Viking Head of Science and Sustainability, Dr. Damon Stanwell-Smith, talked about the vision and purpose of Viking’s research, which aligns with its goal of providing an educational, unique Great Lakes cruise experience for its guests.

Viking is a Norwegian company owned by Torstein Hagen and his daughter, Karine Hagen. They wanted to create a different type of expedition-style cruise targeted toward the curious traveler seeking knowledge and adventure.

“The market we aim for is what we refer to as ‘the intellectually curious,'” Stanwell-Smith noted. “People who are interested in culture, and history, and geography, and destination, and place.”

News File Photo The Lady Michigan glass-bottom boat is dwarfed by the Viking Octantis Great Lakes cruise ship, anchored in Thunder Bay in May 2022, the first time it came to Alpena.

He said over the past 25 years, the company has grown, and continues to grow and expand its offerings. The first Great Lakes cruise launched in May 2022, with a stop in Alpena. This summer, the two ships will take turns touring Alpena, with the Polaris due here on Friday.

“We have over 100 ships,” Stanwell-Smith explained. “Most of them are river ships. We take a lot of Americans to Europe and around the world, on rivers. We have a fleet of ocean ships, they’re what is described as small ocean ships ­– they still have 900 guests on board.”

The Polaris and Octantis each carry 378 guests for the Great Lakes cruises, with 260 crew members.

“A subset of that crew are a team of expedition specialists and scientists,” Stanwell-Smith said. “We also have two submarines on each ship, so we have a submarine team.”

While the guests are cruising, scientists are conducting research at the same time on the ship.

“Four years ago, Viking decided that we should build expedition vessels,” Stanwell-Smith said. “But the market that we’re looking at is to do sincere, credible, rigorous science while guests are on board. So, we built, during the pandemic lockdown, two expedition ships.”

The Octantis and Polaris are Viking longships.

“They are 77 feet wide,” Stanwell-Smith said. “And the Welland Canal (Ontario, Canada) is 78 feet wide. That’s not a coincidence. We designed them to be just narrow enough to get into the Great Lakes. So, those ships are sailing in Antarctica for five months of the year, and then they migrate north.

“The way that we deliver science is that we are a ship of opportunity,” Stanwell-Smith said. “We can do a variety of things in support of science, and we deliver that through different institutional partners.”

Viking partners with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center in Alpena.

“We have a high-level arrangement, which is called a CRADA, which stands for Commercial Research and Development Agreement, which is what the U.S. Federal Government signs with private-sector entities,” he noted. “We signed that when we started this in January 2020, and that was with GLERL, so the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratories, part of NOAA, in Ann Arbor. And we have, since then, we work in support of NOAA’s mission.”

He said the partnership is mutually beneficial, not just to NOAA and Viking, but to advancing Great Lakes research at a faster pace while also providing an expedition-style cruise experience to guests, many of whom have never visited the Great Lakes.

“We are very well aligned,” Stanwell-Smith said. “We can mutually help one another. The vessels are great platforms for science.”

He said while in Lake Huron, the ships have been using sonar technology to attempt to locate shipwrecks, as well as working with other instruments to collect samples for analysis.

“We’re testing a multi-beam sonar, which is a type of underwater imaging device which NOAA used regularly for finding shipwrecks and understanding the sea bed,” Stanwell-Smith said. “We have identical equipment on our vessels, so we can mutually learn from one another.”

Stanwell-Smith explained that using the cruise ship for scientific research eliminates the need for additional funding because the cruise passengers pay for the whole experience, which covers the research as well.

“Every time we have the best part of 400 guests on board, we have 400 more people who understand what NOAA is, understand the Great Lakes better, understand the mission of the sanctuary, more broadly understand communities, and so on,” Stanwell-Smith said. “So, we contribute to NOAA’s outreach … The people that tend to have the time and the means to travel with Viking are often influential in their own lives, all over the U.S.”

He said about 600,000 people travel with Viking around the world each year, the majority of whom are Americans.

“They come away with a deeper understanding of the Great Lakes, in terms of the communities, in terms of the conservation, in terms of why they’re such an important region,” Stanwell-Smith noted. “Many did not know. For a lot of Americans, the Great Lakes are, sort of, ‘other’.”

Both scientists and historians are aboard the cruise, which promises to be educational.

“We employ scientists,” Stanwell-Smith said. “We have the chief scientists of each of the two vessels, and they have a team on board, of different disciplines … The guests get an opportunity to learn and discuss … and then we also have visiting scientists, as well.”

He summed up the partnership.

“Everything to do with being at sea is expensive,” Stanwell-Smith stated. “Whether it be the Great Lakes, or any other body of water. And, the relationship that we see is, our guests pay money to be onboard, and a proportion of what they pay for is paying for the science, and the science helps them understand the space. It’s really synergistic. So, we support NOAA’s mission at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer, over and above the people that choose to.”

He added that Viking guests help boost the local economy when they visit Alpena restaurants and shops.

“There are many communities, more broadly, on the Lakes, that have never had a cruise ship show up, let alone a Viking cruise ship,” he said. “We’ve had some hearts and minds to make sure that we are sensitive to the needs of these communities, and don’t just, sort of, turn up and disappear without generating revenues for the communities.”