Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve started its own cruise ship monitoring program this July. Cruise companies are paying for independent inspectors to board ships unannounced and check on wastewater management, emissions, marine mammal protection and compliance documentation.
Without Ocean Rangers, Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska is monitoring cruise ships on its own kcaw.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kcaw.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
An Aukeman triathlete leaves the Auke Lakes swim portion to transition to the bike portion in this file photo. (Klas Stolpe) Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - The Aukeman Triathlon is set to splash off at 7:30 a.m. Saturday with the 750-meter swim on Auke Lake, transitioning to a 19K bike ride to the glacier and back, and finishing with an out-and-back 5K run from the University of Alaska Southeast campus to complete the sprint distance course.
“It’s just a quiet little race this year,” Aukeman race director Liz Smith said. “We haven’t done any advertising, but we have been full for over a month.”
ArcticToday
But voyages through the Northwest Passage are still on hold.
ByYereth Rosen
A cruise ship sails in a fjord in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. (Scott Gende / National Park Service)
Federal legislation has cleared the way for the resumption of cruise travel in Alaska this year though not at the record-breaking level that had been expected prior to the pandemic.
President Biden on Monday signed a bill sponsored by the Alaska Congressional delegation, the Alaska Tourism Restoration Act, that gives large passenger vessels a temporary exemption from the requirement that foreign-flagged ships to make stopovers in Canada. The Canadian government has halted voyages by large passenger ships until 2022, erecting an impediment for the large cruise ships that typically sail north to Alaska in the summer. (It also extended a ban pleasure craft from Canadian Arctic waters through 2022.)