Discover the polar environment through a curated series of talks and hands-on sessions. Join experts to join onboard lectures on wildlife, ice, and Indigenous histories, and participate in Citizen Science initiatives that deepen your understanding of this changing region.

Contribute observations to NASA cloud observations and other research projects, compare notes with the Expedition Team, and hone field skills between deck sightings. This learning-forward programme turns the voyage into a floating classroom, connecting scenery to science and story.

Go ashore by Zodiac to Zodiac ashore at Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) Territorial Park, where low tundra meets a pebbled Arctic shore. Walk with guides on a guided tundra hike, looking for arctic fox tracks and migratory birds while learning how permafrost shapes this living coastline.

Visit the weathered buildings at Pauline Cove, echoes of the 19th-century whaling era. Stories of Inuvialuit heritage, seasonal travel, and subsistence traditions bring context to a starkly beautiful landscape threaded with history.

Explore by inflatable as smoke rises from the coastal bluffs of the Smoking Hills. Your driver noses close—conditions permitting—to the self-igniting cliffs, where sulfur-streaked rock and steaming vents meet the cold Arctic air.

This otherworldly shoreline, fueled by burning lignite seams, reveals colorful mineral bands and sulfur-stained slopes. The Zodiac cruise offers striking photography and a rare look at geology in action along Franklin Bay’s lonely coast.

Visit Ulukhaktok, a welcoming Inuvialuit community renowned for its art. Meet cultural hosts and watch a printmaking demonstration that showcases the distinctive Holman style—stone-cut and stencil techniques depicting wildlife, hunting scenes, and seasonal life on Victoria Island.

Conversations with creators offer perspective on materials, motifs, and the realities of remote Arctic life. Opportunities to meet local artists and view finished works connect travelers to living culture, not just its artifacts.

Explore Cambridge Bay (Ikaluktutiak) with local guides, moving from shoreline vistas to community landmarks that frame life in the Kitikmeot Region. Hear how sea ice, migration, and modern services intersect in daily routines.

This guided community walk may include stops at interpretive displays and small businesses, offering windows into Arctic everyday life. Along the coast, short tundra strolls reveal hardy willow, lichens, and traces of ancient travel routes etched into the landscape.

Visit Gjoa Haven, a hub of stories linking Inuit oral histories with European exploration. At the Nattilik Heritage Centre, exhibits illuminate community life and the fateful routes of the Franklin expedition among the islands of the central Arctic.

Guides share how Roald Amundsen overwintered nearby aboard Roald Amundsen’s Gjøa, navigating with Inuit knowledge that shaped his success. Artifacts, maps, and local perspectives ground epic narratives in place.

Cruise the shoreline of the Jenny Lind Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary where landing may be restricted to protect nesting grounds. Your Zodiac safari scans for grazing muskox, Arctic fox tracks, and rafts of eiders and long-tailed ducks on the current.

Interpreters explain how wind, ice, and short summers compress the entire life cycle of Arctic shorebirds into a brief, frantic season. Binoculars are essential; patience rewards with movement on the tundra’s subtle canvas.

Venture by inflatable to the shifting boundary of open water and sea ice—the ice edge—near remote Prince of Wales Island in northern Nunavut. Your Zodiac exploration weaves among brash ice while the team assesses conditions for safe approaches.

This is prime habitat for seals and the predators that follow. Watch for seals hauled out on floes, kittiwakes feeding at current lines, and the creak and crackle of living ice filling the air.

Pay respects at Beechey Island, where stark headlands guard the Franklin expedition graves. Weather permitting, step ashore to walk the gravel beach and hear how early searchers used this anchorage in their quest for a Northwest Passage.

Across Lancaster Sound, cliffs and terraces of Radstock Bay reveal wildlife perches and traces of ancient camps. Guides sketch the region’s role as a historic exploration corridor, connecting human grit with austere Arctic grandeur.

Explore Maxwell Bay off King George Island by inflatable, gliding beneath basalt headlands of the South Shetland Islands. The Zodiac cruise traces calm coves frequented by fur seals and skuas, with views toward international research stations along the coast.

When wildlife allows, linger by penguin rookeries to observe commuting birds and the social chatter of colonies against a backdrop of glacier tongues and sea mist. Guides frame natural history within ongoing Antarctic science.

Walk the lonely shoreline of Dundas Harbour on Devon Island, where weathered buildings and grave markers recall a remote Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost. Tread carefully among tent rings and middens that speak to Thule-era sites a millennium old.

Guides explain why fierce winters and isolation twice led to abandonment. Across the bay, broad mesas and ice-scoured slopes reinforce Devon’s status as the world’s largest uninhabited island, a landscape scaled to Arctic time.

Explore the gateway town of Pond Inlet before pushing by inflatable into the sheer labyrinth of Sirmilik National Park. Glide beneath sheer-walled fjords, watching for kittiwakes on ledges and harbor seals surfacing in mirror-still water.

Along tide lines, float within sight of tidewater glaciers where blue ice calves into sculptural bergs. Cultural insights ashore pair naturally with the geology and wildlife that define this extraordinary Arctic seascape.

Enter the rock-walled stillness of North Arm Fjord, where cliffs rise abruptly and waterfalls thread down to the sea. Your driver idles in glass-calm water for photographs of ice-sculpted walls and bergy bits drifting with the tide.

Interpretive commentary highlights geology, wildlife perches, and the slow movement of hanging glaciers in a landscape built over deep time. Sound carries; often only the whisper of meltwater breaks the silence.

Cross Baffin Bay with binoculars ready, contributing to Citizen Science while scanning for fin, humpback, and minke whales on migration. Record cloud types, sea state, and notable sightings as the team logs data for international projects.

Between observations, naturalists decode the mosaic of currents, plankton blooms, and drifting sea ice that set the stage for life here. Moments with migrating whales become richer with context, linking personal experience to global research.

Explore Greenland’s compact capital on a guided tour that includes the Nuuk National Museum, home to the remarkably preserved Greenlandic mummies from Qilakitsoq. Stroll past colorful wooden houses to Nuuk Cathedral and the sculpture-dotted waterfront.

Learn how history, language, and modern governance shape everyday life before browsing local design at the Old Harbour. This shore experience is offered at additional cost and is bookable with your Expedition Team on tour.

Elevate your images in a focused Polar Photography Masterclass. In small groups, work with an expedition photographer on exposure, composition, and techniques for ice, wildlife, and fast-changing light.

Practical deck sessions harness the glow of low-angle Arctic light, while feedback clinics refine your workflow from capture to edit. This enhancement is offered at additional cost and bookable on tour; suitable for enthusiastic beginners through experienced shooters.

Slip quietly into guided sea kayaking along cliff-lined coves and berg-dotted waters. Paddle between brash ice and sculptural growlers, feeling the scale of ice-studded bays from water level.

With expert guides, learn cold-water techniques and safe spacing while savoring the silence of the High Arctic. Limited places, weather- and ice-dependent; offered at additional cost and bookable with your Expedition Team on tour.

Experience an Inuit cultural performance hosted by community members in Pond Inlet. Hear the breath and rhythm of throat singing and drum dancing, interwoven with stories of seasonal life, kinship, and the land.

Opportunities to meet community hosts foster respectful exchange while supporting local initiatives. This activity is subject to community scheduling, offered at additional cost, and bookable on tour.

Take the leap with the Polar Plunge, a brisk dip from the ship’s platform under careful supervision. Step into icy Arctic water, emerging to cheers, a warm towel, and serious bragging rights.

Safety briefings precede the jump, with a safety team on standby and hot drinks waiting. Weather- and ice-dependent; offered at additional cost and bookable with your Expedition Team on tour.

Join the Expedition Team on the open decks to join naturalists on deck as the ship clears the Bering Strait and arcs into the Beaufort Sea. Scan the waterline off Point Barrow for surfacing bowhead whales, and keep an eye out for ivory flashes of seabirds riding the wind.

Guides share insight into Arctic flyways, sea-ice dynamics, and marine ecology while you pause for photos and reflection. Crisp air, long horizons, and the possibility of Pacific walruses on floes make this an elemental introduction to the polar world.