Heavy icebreaker Polar Star headed for Arctic duty
The USA has but one functioning heavy icebreaker and normally this time of year it would be at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, breaking ice to the U.S. base as part of Operation Deep Freeze. The Polar Star, which is home-ported in Seattle, will instead travel to the Arctic this winter.
The COVID-19 pandemic is considered a serious enough risk to personnel at McMurdo Station that Operation Deep Freeze will not happen. This will be the Polar Star’s first cruise to the Arctic since 1982.
The vessel began cruising Puget Sound to ensure they don’t steam north with an unwanted stowaway in form of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Once assured that crew quarantines have done their job the vessel began the real part of the cruise. The plan does not include making landfall in Nome. They will call at Kodiak and Dutch Harbor on their way to the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea. In the Bering and Chukchi Seas they will cruise within the 200-mile economic zone extending from the Alaska shore.
The Polar Star was commissioned in 1976 as one of two American heavy icebreakers. The other was its sister ship the Polar Sea, now decommissioned.
The ship is capable of breaking through ice up to 21 feet thick. The Healy, which has been calling on Nome regularly, is a medium icebreaker which can cruise through ice ten feet thick. The Healy’s mission is to transport scientists into Arctic waters for ongoing research, much of it related to climate change. The Healy was forced to cancel this year’s voyage north after a fire on Aug. 18 destroyed an electric propulsion motor. The vessel is now in Seattle undergoing repairs. The United States Coast Guard had a spare motor sitting in an East Coast warehouse and it has been installed.
The National Science Foundation pays for and runs the U.S. icebreakers as they are designated as research vessels. The U.S. Coast Guard operates them. The Polar Star was placed in “Commission-Special” status in Seattle in 2006. The crew was reduced to 44 to keep the ship fit for a possible return to the ice.
In 2009 the National Science Foundation announced they would end funding for maintaining the Polar Star.
But in March of 2010 it was announced that the Polar Star would get a $62 million overhaul and two years later the vessel was reactivated. The overhaul took four years, cost $57 million, and was completed by Vigor Industrial shipyard in Seattle. After tests in 2013 the Polar Star was assigned to Antarctic duties. In January 2014, the ship was dispatched to attempt to rescue the Russian research ship Adademic Shokalskiy and the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long. They were both trapped in the Antarctic ice. However, they both managed to free themselves. Mechanical issues have plagued the aging ship on recent cruises. In 2019 the crew battled a fire in the garbage incinerator room. There were no injuries. The current plan is to keep the Polar Star in service through 2029.
Russia’s icebreaker fleet numbers over 50, several of which are nuclear powered. In 2017 they had 14 under construction. The Polar Star’s trip to the Chukchi Sea is partially a response to Russian naval maneuvers in the Bering Sea last August in which American pollock fishermen were ordered out of the area by the Russians. The Russian command had announced their military exercises but the message wasn’t passed on to the American fishermen.
China has completed six expeditions into Arctic waters. They have made the Arctic a strategic priority despite not being an Arctic nation. The transport of manufactured goods from China and of raw materials to China are primary considerations. The Northern Sea Route is critical for transportation. Ten million tons of goods transited the Northern Sea Route in 2017. Forty percent of those vessels were headed to or originated from Chinese ports.
The cruise ship Crystal Serenity with 1,700 people on board transited the Northwest Passage in 2013. “This is no longer an emerging frontier but is instead a region of growing national importance,” said Vice Admiral Linda Fagan, commander of U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area. “The Coast Guard is committed to protecting U.S. sovereignty and working with our partners to uphold a safe, secure, and rules-based Arctic.”
The Alaska Congressional delegation lobbied long and hard for more icebreakers, their efforts often falling on deaf ears of Lower 48 senators and representatives. But last year they succeeded in getting funding for three heavy icebreakers of a new class. The initial award is for $745.9 million for the construction of the first ship with options for the next two. If all options are exercised the contract will total $1.9 billion. VT Halter Marine Inc. of Pascagoula, Mississippi was awarded the contract. Delivery of the first ship is to be in 2024.