By John Nightingale, Ph.D., president and CEO of Vancouver
Aquarium On Thursday afternoon, we boarded our “home” for the
next 18 nights – the Russian research vessel called the Akedemik
Ioffe. The ship was built in 1980 in Finland, and is operated by
the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanography for the Russian
Academy of Sciences. She is both comfortable as a floating base
for exploration, and large enough at 117 meters to be stable in
rough seas or weather. The ship itself is termed “ice
competent.” It’s not an icebreaker in the true or classical
sense of the word, but if it hits some floating ice, it is
armoured and won’t sink. In Canada, we would call this a Class B
ice vessel. The Russians lease out this ship, as well as its
sister research vessel, the Professor Sergey Vavilov, for
ecotourism, which helps pay for the upkeep and operations of
their scientific research program. The crew is Russian,
including the captain and all of the operational staff. We also
have three Russian scientists aboard. Our explo