What Does Responsible Polar Travel Look Like? Oceanwide’s First ESG Report Opens the Conversation

An expedition ship brings people into unusually close contact with the places they have travelled to understand. Weather shapes the itinerary, ice determines access, and an encounter with wildlife can become the defining memory of a voyage. This proximity is part of polar travel’s appeal, but it also makes its contradictions difficult to overlook. Reaching these environments requires energy, equipment, supplies and considerable logistical support, even as the experience encourages guests to think more carefully about their relationship with the natural world.

Oceanwide Expeditions’ first ESG report enters that conversation with a mixture of practical changes, community partnerships and longer-term investment plans. Its 2026 report covers the environmental, social and governance responsibilities of a company whose work takes place in the Arctic and Antarctica, while also looking beyond those regions to a substantial rainforest restoration project. For travellers, its value lies in the opportunity to examine how responsibility translates into decisions about ships, food, people and the activities that happen ashore.

Writing on LinkedIn to introduce the report, Oceanwide CEO Rémi Bouysset described the relationship between experience and responsibility: “The privilege of exploring these remarkable, fragile places comes with significant responsibility.” The report provides the first consolidated account of how the company is addressing that responsibility, while acknowledging it is a work in progress.

Some of the most useful details concern work that passengers are unlikely to notice. Oceanwide describes recovering waste heat from cooling water and exhaust gases, maintaining hull surfaces to reduce drag, adjusting machinery for greater efficiency and using route-planning software to support navigation. Slow steaming and shore power, where available, also form part of its approach to reducing fuel consumption.

These measures matter because an expedition's environmental performance depends partly on how an existing ship is operated. New vessel designs attract attention, but maintenance, speed, routing, and energy management influence voyages today. The report identifies actions across these areas, although it does not provide enough emissions data to quantify their combined effect across the fleet.

Hotel operations offer equally tangible examples, such as more detailed logistical planning to include reduced mid-season shipments between Vlissingen and Ushuaia from two to one during the 2025/26 Antarctic season. 

Beer taps installed on their ships Hondius and Ortelius are also reported to reduce can consumption by up to 2,000 cans per season, while refillable bathroom dispensers, reverse-osmosis drinking water, and changes to buffet management address recurring sources of packaging and waste.

Food receives attention beyond what is thrown away. Oceanwide serves a fully vegetarian dinner once per voyage and has invested in plant-based cooking training for its head chefs. For passengers, this shows how an operator can change how it provisions and caters for a voyage while keeping food an enjoyable part of the experience. The more significant question for future reporting is how these individual changes add up over successive seasons.

Oceanwide’s plans for two Eco-Sail expedition vessels provide the report’s clearest indication of its longer-term direction. The company says it signed a Letter of Intent in 2026 for vessels planned to join the fleet from 2029, incorporating hybrid technologies such as diesel-electric energy storage systems. Further information about their contribution to reducing carbon intensity is promised in 2027.

For an operator closely engaged with the polar environment, the prospect of new sail-assisted expedition ships is compelling. It also raises questions that will become easier to answer as the designs develop: how much propulsion energy will come from wind, how the ships will perform across different operating conditions, and what reductions they will achieve compared with the vessels and voyages they succeed.

The report leaves those questions open, but the ships’ inclusion nevertheless gives us something concrete to follow as Oceanwide develops its fleet, with the next disclosure offering an opportunity to move from the broad promise of new technology to a clearer account of expected performance.

Perhaps the report’s most unexpected connection takes readers from the polar regions to warm-water operators. Oceanwide says it acquired more than 1,600 hectares of degraded Amazon rainforest in 2023, on land previously affected by illegal logging and fire, and began restoration work in 2024. The project includes planting 60,000 native trees annually, supporting biodiversity and employing local communities.

The story here is broader than the number of trees alone can convey. Restoring damaged forest requires long-term stewardship, with success depending on ecosystem recovery and protection over time. Oceanwide describes the project as self-managed, linking habitat restoration with local employment and carbon sequestration.

The operator forecasts and aims to significantly offset its expedition cruises’ Scope 1 emissions by 2035. That is a future objective for direct operational emissions; it does not mean today’s voyages are carbon neutral or that it accounts for every emission associated with a guest’s holiday.

The project’s progress will therefore deserve attention in its own right, including evidence of forest recovery, tree survival and measured carbon storage. Alongside that, travellers should be able to see how emissions from the voyages themselves are changing. Restoration and operational reductions address different parts of the environmental challenge, and future reporting will be stronger if both can be followed clearly.

Some of the report’s most persuasive examples involve Oceanwide using its ships and expertise to support work in places where access is difficult. In January 2026, the company transported solar-energy equipment to and from Port Lockroy in partnership with the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. It supported maintenance and restoration at historic Bases Y and E on Horseshoe and Stonington Islands. The report also records graffiti removal on Deception Island in February 2025 and ongoing logistical support for the trust.

Such work draws directly on the capabilities of an expedition operator: getting people, equipment and practical assistance to remote locations. Similar support extends to research. Oceanwide also provides onboard space for scientists and equipment, assists with sampling, and supports projects involving the University of Groningen, Wageningen University and the Dutch Meteorological Institute.

Guests can participate through initiatives including Happywhale, Penguin Watch, GLOBE Clouds and FjordPhyto. Oceanwide also says it is recruiting a dedicated citizen-science coordinator to expand these activities and improve how they are tracked. That last element is particularly useful. Participation can deepen a traveller’s understanding, while a clearer record of the data collected and how it's used would help demonstrate the contribution to research beyond the onboard experience.

An expedition’s quality depends heavily on the judgement and experience of its crew and guides, yet their working lives can receive less attention than a ship’s environmental features. Oceanwide’s report includes training routes into officer and leadership positions, maritime internships, crew welfare provision and opportunities for expedition guides to progress through a competency-based development process.

Oceanwide reports that female representation across vessel roles increased from 18% in 2024 to 20% in 2025, while the number of nationalities represented rose from 28 to 44. It also states that crews are employed under a collective bargaining agreement negotiated with international labour unions and recognised by the International Transport Workers’ Federation.

These details broaden the assessment of responsible travel. The people handling ships, preparing meals, maintaining machinery, and making decisions ashore are central to both the guest experience and how an expedition interacts with its surroundings. Training, working conditions and career development belong within that assessment as much as fuel and waste.

Oceanwide reports achieving “Embedded” status, level four of five, under the inaugural Expedition Cruise Network Responsible Expedition Framework. It describes this as recognition of strengths in environmental operations, guest education, and long-term habitat restoration, as well as a way to identify priorities for improvement.

The first ESG report itself offers a useful foundation, bringing activities that might otherwise appear separately into one account. The next step is to make progress easier to assess over time. A fleet-wide emissions baseline, clearly defined reporting boundaries, comparable annual results and measurable targets would help readers understand the scale of change alongside the examples of action.

Bouysset’s own introduction acknowledges that unfinished work: “We have much more to do, and this report gives us a clear foundation to measure our progress, challenge ourselves and keep improving.”

For ExplorEarth readers, the key takeaways are the attention to existing ship operations, the practical contribution to science and heritage work, and the longer-term commitments represented by rainforest restoration and the proposed Eco-Sail vessels. Each offers a different lens on the company’s progress. Together, they make this a report worth returning to as the results develop, particularly for travellers who want to understand how the experience of visiting the polar regions connects with the responsibilities of taking people there.