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:

1991

  • Quark Expeditions launches as a polar adventure specialist
  • Quark conducts is first voyage to the North Pole
  • Quark conducts the first-ever tourism transit of the Northeast Passage
  • Quark charters a fleet of oceanographic research vessels, effectively operating the world's most comprehensive series of Antarctic voyages

1992

  • Quark deploys Russian polar-class icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov to the far side of Antarctica, a sector never before accessible to expedition travelers
  • Quark pioneers the first non-scientific adventure visits to Emperor Penguin rookeries in remote Antarctica

1993

  • Using Kapitan Khlebnikov's helicopters, Quark passengers become the first expedition travelers in the world to visit the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica's remote Ross Sea sector
  • Quark marks the world's first attempt to circumnavigate Greenland, succeeding in making it around 3/4 of the island. Difficult ice thwarts the completion of the expedition's final quarter
  • Quark retraces the legendary Antarctic voyage of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, carrying adventure travelers for the first time

1994

  • Quark crosses 80°N to Nares Strait, making visits to new archaeological and historical sites possible for the first time on both Ellesmere Island and Greenland

1997

  • Quark completes the first-ever circumnavigation of Antarctica for expedition travelers

1999

  • Quark completes the first commercial circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean, aboard icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn

2002

  • Athlete Lynne Cox partners with Quark for her first Antarctic one-mile swim, becoming the first swimmer in history to accomplish this feat
  • Adventurers aboard 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 confirms the location of the world's most northerly Emperor Penguin rookery, near Snow Hill Island in Antarctica's Weddell Sea

2006

  • Quark breaks Roald Amundsen's century old record by achieving the most southern latitude ever reached by a surface vessel - in the Bay of Whales, Ross Sea, Antarctica

2008

  • Quark takes the world's largest and most sophisticated icebreaker, 50 Years of Victory, on her maiden voyage to the North Pole

2009

  • Quark announces that the company's flagship, icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, will retire from expedition travel in March 2012, and that several one-of-a-kind expeditions will mark the occasion

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