Canada’s One Ocean Expeditions has revealed that it is adding the 8,400-gross-ton (gt) ice-class cruiseship Hanseatic (built 1991) to its fleet in September 2018.

The 146-passenger vessel is operated by Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, but is due to be replaced with one of two expedition cruiseship newbuildings that the German company is building at Vard.

Cruise observers say One Ocean is taking the ship on long-term charter. The vessel is to be renamed RCGS Resolute after the Royal Navy’s Arctic exploration vessel HMS Resolute. The RCGS prefix represents One Ocean’s close ties with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

The company currently operates the 6,500-gt sisterships Akademik Ioffe (built 1989) and Akademik Sergei Vavilov (built 1988), a pair of research ships owned by Russia’s Shirshov Institute that do seasonal duty as cruiseships carrying about 90 passengers each.

One Ocean managing director Andrew Prossin indicated that the RCGS Resolute would allow the company to move beyond its Arctic and Antarctic cruise offerings and branch out into warmer destinations.

Poseidon Expeditions, yet another expedition cruise operator, has also revealed that it is planning to add a new ship in the 150-passenger range by 2020.

Steve Wellmeier, Poseidon’s North American sales director, told cruise media late last week that his company did not want to go the luxury route like many expedition cruise companies, but preferred to keep its product pricing at mid-level.

Well-placed industry insiders indicate that Poseidon is negotiating with Miami-based SunStone Ships to charter one of the expedition vessels it has on order in China.

Poseidon, which was founded in 1999 and operates out of offices in the US, the UK, Germany and Cyprus, has a long-standing relationship with SunStone and has its 4,200-passenger cruiseship Sea Spirit (built 1991) on long-term charter.

SunStone president and chief executive Niels-Erik Lund declined to comment on potential negotiations with Poseidon, while the expedition company’s owner, Nikolay Saveliev, could not be reached.

SunStone forged a framework agreement with China Merchants Industry Holdings in March for a series of 160 to 200-passenger expedition cruiseship newbuildings that will be the first to use Ulstein’s patented X-bow technology.

The first of these 7,400-gt ice-class 1A cruiseships will be chartered on a long-term basis to Australia’s Aurora Expeditions, whose shareholders have taken a 50% ownership stake in the vessel.

The expedition cruise sector has been heating up at an unprecedented pace over the past year with well over a dozen orders for new ships placed by a variety of operators, often at yards that have more experience building offshore tonnage rather than cruise vessels.

The most recent order was placed by Portuguese river cruise investment company Mystic Invest, which TradeWinds reported two weeks ago as having signed for a 9,300-gt ice-class ship at WestSea Viana Shipyard in Portugal against a charter to US-based Quark Expeditions.

Mystic Invest has since confirmed that the vessel has been ordered at WestSea via new expedition cruise subsidiary Mystic Cruises. The ship will be chartered to Quark for two years on a seasonal basis and spend the rest of the year being operated by Nicko Cruises, a German company also owned by Mystic Invest. Quark has the option to renew for further periods.

Following the TradeWinds report, Mystic Cruises chief executive Mario Ferreira told Portuguese media that the company was financing the newbuilding via bonds and bank loans. A press release issued by the company indicates that it plans to build several more such ships at WestSea.