There’s been little explanation as to why a Squamish touring company’s ships were seized back by a Russian government entity.
One Ocean Expeditions’ general manager, Catherine Lawton, said the company was told that a “modernization project” was the reason behind the seizures.
As a result, here in Squamish, where One Ocean hosts part of its operations, local employees have had to work around the clock in order to adjust tours and schedules.
One Ocean specializes in taking people on expedition-style cruises to out-of-the-way locations such as Antarctica. At each destination, participants can choose from an array of activities such as camping, ski touring and sea kayaking, among other things. It has several offices around the world, including one in Squamish.
“It’s not a situation you can ever prepare for,” said Lawton of the seizures. “But we have a fantastic schedule now built. It just took a lot of really fast work in a short period of time.”
On May 21, One Ocean announced that two of their three vessels had been suddenly taken out of service.
“In recent days OOE was informed that the owners of the Ioffe and Vavilov have suddenly and unexpectedly withdrawn the vessels from passenger service,” Lawton said earlier in a news release.
“Their decision comes as a complete surprise to OOE and is out of our control. The withdrawal of the vessels for the 2019-20 season is a breach of the owners’ contract with OOE and is now the subject of legal action.”
The two ships Akademik Ioffe and Akademik Sergey Vavilov, are owned by the Russian government’s P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology.
However, the pair have been chartered by One Ocean for some time with long-term agreements, the company says.
Lawton says that the Canadian government has been informed of the matter.
In the meantime, One Ocean’s third and newest vessel, the RCGS Resolute will be taking up the slack.
Lawton said that the company would be looking at “fleet renewal” in the future, though she declined to elaborate on what that would entail.
In response, after an initial version of this story was posted online that stated The Chief was unable to get through to the organization, the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology sent an email to The Chief that said it “has no contractual relationships with and, consequently, [is] not liable to the One Ocean Expeditions.”
The institute said that both ships are time-chartered by Terragelida Ship Management Ltd. until Autumn 2019.
“Presently the vessels being at the disposal of Terragelida Ship Management Ltd. have been properly maintained and are available in Kaliningrad home port. Terragelida Ship Management Ltd. duly fulfils its commitments assumed within the framework of the contract with IO RAS,” wrote Julia Kononova, Head of PR department at the institute.
“The P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of Russian Academy of Sciences, the owner of the above vessels, is not to be blame[d] for cancellation of cruises, as announced by the One Ocean Expeditions, declares the vessels to be technically ready for operation and welcomes to contact Terragelida Ship Management Ltd. being the charterer of Akademik Ioffe and Akademik Sergey Vavilov for more detailed information.”
The Chief sent requests for comment to the Russian consulate in Ottawa and has yet to hear a response.
**Please note that this story has been updated since it was first posted to include comment from the institute.
