Our Firsts
Since inception, Quark Expeditions has delivered many firsts in expedition travel by passenger cruise vessel in the polar regions. Here are just a few of them.
1991
Quark Expeditions launches as a polar adventure specialist.Quark Expeditions conducts its first voyage to the North Pole.Quark Expeditions conducts the first-ever tourism transit of the Northeast Passage, the historic route along the Arctic coast of Europe and Asia.Quark operates the most comprehensive series of Antarctic voyages by chartering a fleet of oceanographic research vessels.
1992
Quark Expeditions deploys the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov to the Far Side of Antarctica, a sector never before accessible to expedition travel.Quark Expeditions offers the first visits for non-scientific adventurers to Emperor Penguin rookeries.
1993
Using helicopters carried aboard Kapitan Khlebnikov, Quark Expeditions passengers fly to McMurdo Dry Valleys, in the Ross Sea Sector of Antarctica, a first for expedition travel.Quark Expeditions makes the first-ever attempt to circumnavigate Greenland - difficult ice thwarts the attempt with only a quarter of the expedition remaining.Quark Expeditions retraces the legendary voyage of Endurance, the first time the voyage was completed with commercial passengers.
1994
Quark crosses 80°N to Nares Strait, the narrow, ice-choked waterway between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, making visits to new archaeological, historical sites on both sides of the Strait possible.
1996
Quark Expeditions begins a circumnavigation of Antarctica, the first ever passenger voyage of its kind.
1997
At 21:44 hours (GMT), January 24, 1997, Quark Expeditions icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov returns to 60°S, 50° 45'W, after 60 days at sea, having successfully completed the first-ever circumnavigation of Antarctica with commercial passengers.
1999
Quark Expeditions' icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn circumnavigated the Arctic Ocean.
2002
Lynne Cox, the world's premier cold-water open-water swimmer, partners with Quark Expeditions for her first Antarctic one-mile swim. Cox was the first swimmer in history to accomplish such a feat.Adventurers aboard the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov are the first commercial travelers to witness a total eclipse of the sun in the isolation of Antarctica's Davis Sea.
2004
Quark Expeditions confirms the location of the most northerly Emperor Penguin rookery in the world, near Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea.
2006
In the Bay of Whales, Ross Sea, Quark Expeditions breaks Roald Amundsen's record, set nearly a century ago, by reaching the farthest south latitude of any surface vessel.
2008
Quark Expeditions operates the maiden voyage to the North Pole of the world's largest and most sophisticated icebreaker, 50 Years of Victory.
2009
End of an Era - Quark Expeditions announces that the company's flagship Kapitan Khlebnikov will retire as an expedition vessel in March 2012. Quark presents a number of one-of-a-kind expeditions that will never be repeated.