This update is necessitated by recent travel on 12 Holland America (HAL) cruises since August 2022 where I (Mike) was a lecturer. This resulted from contacting the correct person at HAL and probably by the need for HAL to quickly fill relevant cruises with speakers as the cruise ship industry came/comes out of the COVID-related shutdown. We have also taken one personal cruise to Antarctic with HAL in Dec 2024.

My/our experience as a speaker provided additional insight into cruising that I would not have obtained by being only a passenger. I now have a better understanding of some of the constraints under which these ships operate. This update adds to the original page on Cruising for Naturalists that still mostly remains valid.

We brought along a spotting scope on our last two cruises to test its utility from a cruise ship. We had read in Astronomy forums that the ship’s motion makes them unusable from cruise ships. In our voyage across the Atlantic I found that the scope (at least at low magnification – 15x) was quite stable and the ship’s motion was tolerable. That is, the subject remained in the field of view for many seconds without drifting out when the ship rolled or pitched.

Reflections on cruising and seeing nature

We have been able to reflect more on the role of cruising and whether seeing nature is really feasible from cruising during our recent “cruises for lecturing”. It is possible to get addicted to such cruising, despite the workload of preparing talks. But the reality is that it is difficult to see the natural environments away from ports of call while cruising. The time in port is always short, governed by work hours, port fees, and often the need to reach another port by the following morning. Early morning or late afternoon wildlife viewing is a near-impossibility with most cruise itineraries. Likewise, larger towns are not suited to walking to a natural location and transport can often be hard, or expensive, to arrange. Most serious from a naturalist’s perspective is the lack of tours geared towards nature observation, whether birds, plants, geological features or general natural history. Mass tourism requires designing tours that accommodate the interests of most people and only a fraction of cruisers have strong interests in nature-related activities. Likewise, nature-related activities like hiking on a trail to see plants or animals cannot function well with large groups. Furthermore, effective guides must have specialized knowledge of what visitors might want to see.

Cruise lines, coming out of the COVID pandemic shutdown, had a need to recover costs and this is apparent to most cruisers. Cruise lines are businesses and must make a profit to continue to provide cruising services. It isn’t entirely clear what kind of clientele makes up most Holland America cruisers. It may depend strongly on the cruise destination. Cruisers on more “exploratory-type” cruises to less-visited locations (e.g. the Amazon, Antarctica, Greenland) probably favor more lecture content about the places being visited and less standard entertainment that any Las Vegas hotel can provide (e.g. singers, dancers and comedians), but this is only an informal impression gained from speaking with passengers. Short cruises to the Caribbean Sea, with sun and sand the main objective, probably have clientele with different interests. My biased perspective is that evening entertainment should be more limited on exploratory cruises in favor of more enrichment with destination talks. Travel the World to see the World.

As to seeing nature while cruising, we think the promenade is the key component of any cruise ship. Sadly, many larger ships are doing away with this in favor of private balconies. Balconies do not permit seeing both sides of the ship! Nor do they allow for interacting with other passengers while observing. A cruise ship without a promenade is much like any Las Vegas hotel. What makes cruising different is the ocean, not the ship’s amenities. Yes, you wake up in a different location, but after a while the tourist-oriented shops look pretty much the same in any port.

My motivation for providing talks aboard cruise ships has mostly centered on increasing the awareness of the natural world to the public. I have had a nearly life-long interest in conserving nature, starting in High School. The single largest stumbling block to this is education of the public. You can see my strategy for trying to do this at this page. Honestly, after 12 cruises, I cannot say it has been entirely successful. The scale of the problem is enormous, and honestly, there aren’t enough people providing the outreach.

Final Note: You may think that you too may want to become a cruise ship lecturer. My views on this are here. In July 2023 I came across a surprisingly similar article on the CruiseCritic website about wanting to become a cruise ship lecturer. It is valuable to read if you are thinking that you too can do it for free cruises. You may be able to, but there is a lot to it.