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I am grossly dissatisfied with Quarks handling with the situation, and now I am reading similar things about how NatGeo/Lindblad is handling their customers. I have taken 3 cruises with NatGeo/Lindblad, and have a trip to Svalbard in July currently booked with Quark. TripInsurance DOES NOT cover for pandemics and there is no credit card protection either. You stand to loose a LOT of money should the virus (for any reason) impact your trip. I would be very hesitant to book a cruise with either of these companies until the coronavirus mess is under control. I went with Quark, in part because at the time I booked the Lindblad trip had already sold out of the cabin class I would have been interested in. It sounds like you may have done this already.īottom line: as pt2770 noted, you will almost certainly have a great time on either trip. I created a spreadsheet that showed how long I was actually on the ship on each expedition and how long I would be at each destination. Something else to be aware of is that different companies count the duration of their expeditions differently. Another way of looking at it is that if you go with Quark, the people who drink alcohol and are paying for it (which MANY people did) are subsidizing the cost of my trip.Īnother consideration is that the Lindblad trip I looked at offered unlimited kayaking at no additional charge whereas on Quark only a limited number of people could kayak and it costs about $1,000 per person extra. My wife and I don't drink alcohol, and so this was of no interest to us, but it meant that part of what we would be paying extra for with Lindblad is something that would be of no benefit to us. One thing I noted is that Lindblad offered unlimited alcoholic beverages at no additional charge. The expedition is funded by a generous grant from the Swedish Postcode Foundation.I was doing this very same comparison about one year ago.
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The information collected will be used to catalyse the advancement of a transboundary marine protected area (MPA), shared between Finland and Sweden, to help safeguard this remarkable area. This work will focus on a combination of areas, to highlight the Quark’s importance for aquatic life, and to provide data from areas where less information is available, such as offshore reefs and banks.
#Quark expeditions professional
During an 18-day, at-sea research expedition, surveys will be carried out across the archipelago, using a team of professional divers, a remote underwater camera system, grab sampling of the seabed, and a drone. Now, Oceana is returning to study the Quark in greater detail. Oceana carried out research surveys in the Quark during previous Baltic Sea expeditions in 20, which drew attention to the biodiversity value of the area.
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Although some marine protected areas have been designated in the Quark, these areas vary in their aims, and in the levels of protection they provide to marine life. The Quark provides feeding and breeding grounds for several types of seabirds, is a natural migration route for salmon, and is home to the critically endangered sea-spawning grayling.Ĭurrently, the Quark is primarily recognised for its geological value, with a UNESCO World Heritage site was designated in 2000, and which mainly offers protection to geological features.
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Land uplift has also created a steady succession of shallow marine bays that are biodiversity and productivity hotspots for marine life. These geological processes have also helped to shape unusual underwater communities in the Quark, characterised by a mix of marine, brackish, and freshwater species, many of which are at the limits of their distribution. The area is one of the few places in the world where land literally “springs up from the sea” due to a process known as land uplift: land, at one time compressed by the weight of thousands of metres of ice during the last Ice Age, has been rising back up at a rate of nearly one centimetre per year. The Quark (also called Kvarken in English and Swedish, and Merenkurkku in Finnish) is a narrow strait in the Gulf of Bothnia that separates Finland and Sweden. End of Oceana's Quark Expedition 2018 from Oceana on Vimeo.