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Expedition Micro Cruises, Photography Tours & Private Charters
❄️ For just 12-36 guests - Industry's Smallest Group Size
🌎 Explore Svalbard, Greenland, Antarctica & South Georgia
👣 Rekindling the lost spirit of exploration

In October, the Arctic tundras of Svalbard and Greenland witness a remarkable natural event: the reindeer mating season🦌...
22/10/2026

In October, the Arctic tundras of Svalbard and Greenland witness a remarkable natural event: the reindeer mating season🦌❄️

During this time, males compete for dominance while females select mates, ensuring the strongest genes carry on. These herds navigate a harsh landscape of ice and snow, relying on instincts honed over millennia. It’s a quiet, crucial chapter in the life cycle of Arctic wildlife, unfolding beneath the endless polar skies 🌌

🔗 See these majestic reindeer in their Arctic home in Svalbard and Greenland. Plan your 2027 adventure at https://zurl.co/xy3xX

22/10/2026

AECW is underway in Oslo! 🇳🇴

Our Operations team member Yaroslava Skorikova is there for Arctic Expedition Cruise Week 2026, connecting with industry colleagues, destinations and partners to exchange ideas and discuss the future of expedition cruising and Arctic tourism.

Looking forward to the conversations and insights from this week!

📍 Oslo, Norway | 20–23 October 2026

G R E E N L A N D 2 0 2 6 🧊Greenland 2026 was nothing short of extraordinary. Home to icebergs, towering glaciers, and ...
20/10/2026

G R E E N L A N D 2 0 2 6 🧊

Greenland 2026 was nothing short of extraordinary. Home to icebergs, towering glaciers, and wildlife that seems to exist in a world untouched by time. From curious musk oxen to playful seals and the occasional polar bear, every moment reminded us why Greenland is one of the planet’s most awe-inspiring frontiers

With 12 guests and two Senior Polar Guides, there was always time for the second question, and the third. Why an iceberg rolls. How these fjords have changed over the seasons our guides have worked here. What allows musk oxen to survive a Greenland winter. Our guests left Greenland understanding it, not just having seen it.

There are few better places to end a season. Thank you to everyone who explored with us this year.

❄️ Missed our Arctic 2026 season debrief? Watch the recording of our recent virtual event, where our photographers, guests and resident scientist look back at the season across Svalbard and Northeast Greenland.

🎥 Watch the webinar recording: https://zurl.co/3aS7x

📸 All photos: Giancarlo Gallinoro ()

All images captured from a respectful distance, in accordance with AECO guidelines.

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Meet your 2027 Arctic Expedition Leaders: Giancarlo Gallinoro 🐻‍❄️❄️"It's all about having great adventures while leavin...
19/10/2026

Meet your 2027 Arctic Expedition Leaders: Giancarlo Gallinoro 🐻‍❄️❄️

"It's all about having great adventures while leaving a small footprint, and doing it alongside a fantastic team." – Giancarlo Gallinoro

Giancarlo is a Secret Atlas Expedition Leader, guide and nature photographer with deep expertise in the Arctic. With a background in wildlife biology and conservation, as well as film and photography, he brings together scientific understanding, creative storytelling and years of hands-on experience in Svalbard and Greenland.

Behind the camera, Giancarlo has worked on major film productions, including National Geographic's docu-series Hostile Planet and other nature documentaries. He is a published photographer and conservationist, has contributed to projects such as 100 for the Ocean, and curated the Italian edition of the book Polar Bears: Beloved and Betrayed 🎥📸

His love of the Arctic started at age eight, watching a documentary about Greenland's icebergs, glaciers and polar bears. Years later, his first trip to Svalbard felt like coming home. Speaking English and Italian, with a basic knowledge of Spanish, Norwegian and French, Giancarlo is ready to welcome explorers from around the world on board in 2027 🚢

🔗 To discover more about Giancarlo and his photography style, keep reading his expedition profile here: https://www.secretatlas.com/meet-the-team/giancarlo-gallinoro

Virtual Event: Meet the Guides of Antarctica 🇦🇶 ❄️Before the ship, the route, or the wildlife, there’s a simpler questio...
16/10/2026

Virtual Event: Meet the Guides of Antarctica 🇦🇶 ❄️

Before the ship, the route, or the wildlife, there’s a simpler question to ask about Antarctica: who will be standing beside you on the ice?

On Tuesday 27 October, we're going live with the people who will lead Aureum's first Antarctic season, beginning in November 2027 with a considered limit of 36 guests. This is a chance to hear from them directly before the season begins.

In the hour, they'll talk through:

❄️ What a limit of 36 guests changes once you're ashore in Antarctica, and why it matters for the wildlife as much as for you.
❄️ Why the calls are made on the ice and not in an office, and what goes into deciding when to stay and when to move on, in their own words.
❄️ How micro-scale lets a day follow the conditions, and why Antarctica, more than anywhere, rewards that.
❄️ What each of them is looking forward to as Aureum heads south for the first time.
❄️ A live Q&A with all three, so bring anything you want to know.

Your speakers:

🎙️ Mariano Curiel, Expedition Leader and Co-owner of Secret Atlas, and the first Argentine to ski across Greenland
🎙️ Ombline Chabasseur, Expedition Leader, with more than 15 years in the polar regions
🎙️ Kelsey Camacho, Expedition Guide and historian, with eight years guiding in the polar regions
🎙️ Hosted by Carys Siney, Expedition Specialist

Tuesday 27 October, 7pm (UK)
8pm CET | 2pm CDT | 3pm EDT | 6am AEDT (Wednesday 28 October)

Reserve your place: https://www.secretatlas.com/webinars/meet-the-guides-of-antarctica

Gentoo penguins are one of the rare species doing well as Antarctica warms.A BBC piece this week by Martha Henriques set...
14/10/2026

Gentoo penguins are one of the rare species doing well as Antarctica warms.

A BBC piece this week by Martha Henriques sets out why. Along the Western Antarctic Peninsula, gentoo numbers rose by around 23% between 2013 and 2020, and ecologist Heather Lynch describes them as a clear "climate change winner".

The reason is adaptability. Gentoos switch between krill and fish depending on what's available. If a flood or late snowstorm destroys their eggs, they can lay again, something neither of their closest relatives can do. They can also shift their breeding season as conditions change, and they keep moving further south.

Those relatives tell the other half of the story. Adélie numbers on the Peninsula have fallen by 65% in 25 years. Chinstraps have declined sharply too.

The article opens on Deception Island, a flooded volcanic caldera where whaling stations once operated. In a photograph by Romain Barats, shortlisted for Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026, three moulting gentoos shelter beside a rusted oil tank. They use the volcanic warmth and the old machinery to wait out the wind. Even the way they moult shows how resourceful they are.

This is why we treat the polar regions as living places, not frozen museums. Seeing a gentoo colony is one thing. Understanding why it is growing while the Adélies further south are disappearing is another, and that understanding is what stays with people.

Lynch suspects that if any penguin ever nests inside Deception Island's caldera, it will be a gentoo. On current evidence, it's hard to bet against them.

❄️ Want to see how the gentoo story unfolds? Find our South Georgia Expedition Micro Cruises at https://zurl.co/iVEZC

BBC Travel BBC Earth BBC Wildlife Magazine

Condé Nast Traveler has published its 2026 Readers’ Choice Awards, and Secret Atlas is ranked #10 in the Expedition Cru...
13/10/2026

Condé Nast Traveler has published its 2026 Readers’ Choice Awards, and Secret Atlas is ranked #10 in the Expedition Cruise category. ❄️🎖️

These awards are decided by readers, not a panel. So our thanks go to everyone who sailed with us, shared a story, forwarded an email, told a friend, or voted. Secret Atlas is small, independent, and founder-led. Being named among operators many times our size tells us the case for travelling small is worth making.

This is how Condé Nast Traveler describes us:

"Secret Atlas calls its voyages Expedition Micro Cruises — and its fleet’s passenger counts explain why. Its Arctic sailings carry just 12 guests, while expeditions to Antarctica and South Georgia top out at 36. With everyone able to leave the ship quickly, itineraries can remain even more flexible around weather and wildlife than larger expedition ships."

We could not have put it more plainly.

A small group means everyone ashore at once, and a plan that follows the ice, the weather, and the wildlife rather than a schedule. Flexibility is not something we add. It is how the ship works.

That, to us, is why we intend to stay micro: twelve guests in the Arctic, thirty-six in Antarctica.

S V A L B A R D 2 0 2 6 ❄️ Four months. Countless unscripted moments. One extraordinary Arctic season. As our Svalbard e...
12/10/2026

S V A L B A R D 2 0 2 6 ❄️

Four months. Countless unscripted moments. One extraordinary Arctic season.

As our Svalbard expeditions come to a close, our Expedition Micro Cruise ships, MV Vikingfjord and MV Freya have continued south towards Iceland for the final voyages of the year.

Sea ice clinging to the fjords in early summer. A polar bear walking the floe edge as we held position in silence. Arctic foxes moving along the shoreline. Walrus returning to the same beaches year after year. And a whale surfacing so close to the Zodiac, we heard it breathe before we saw it.

With just 12 guests on board, and six to each Zodiac, there was space to slow down, wait and let the Arctic dictate the moment.

Looking back through the photographs, that's what stands out most.

❄️ Missed our Arctic 2026 season debrief? Watch the recording of our recent virtual event, where our photographers, guests and resident scientist look back at the season across Svalbard and Northeast Greenland.

🎥 Watch the webinar recording: https://www.secretatlas.com/webinars/a-season-from-the-ice-edge-season-usa

📸 1 : Paul Goldstein
📸 2: Julien Cornet
📸 3, 5 & 7: Giancarlo Gallinoro
📸 4 & 6: Tristan Young

*All images captured from a respectful distance, in accordance with AECO guidelines.

Meet our Resident Science Researcher: Dr Paige Maroni 🔬❄️"Exploration creates responsibility." – Dr Paige MaroniPaige is...
09/10/2026

Meet our Resident Science Researcher: Dr Paige Maroni 🔬❄️

"Exploration creates responsibility." – Dr Paige Maroni

Paige is a polar and deep-sea biologist and Secret Atlas Expedition Scientist, exploring some of the most remote and least accessible marine environments on Earth. Since 2024, she has joined our expeditions to Svalbard and Greenland, turning each voyage into a platform for real Arctic science.

As co-founder and director of Polar BLAST (Baseline, Life, and Structure of the Arctic), Paige uses underwater robotics to map Arctic biodiversity and assess ecosystem health, and her work has already uncovered previously unidentified species. She is also pioneering ways to sequence the genomes of deep-sea organisms in remote locations, helping decode the evolutionary story of some of the ocean's least-known life 🧬

On board, guests get a rare front-row seat to polar research in action, from ROV dives to the discoveries that follow.

🐻‍❄️ Missed the talk? No worries! Paige joined us for our Season from the Arctic Ice Edge virtual events to share what Svalbard's waters keep turning up beneath the ice, at depths no one expected. Catch up on the full recording here: https://zurl.co/mwTPM

South Georgia: the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean 🌞Around 450,000 pairs of king penguins breed on this island. Elephant...
08/10/2026

South Georgia: the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean 🌞
Around 450,000 pairs of king penguins breed on this island. Elephant seals haul out along the same shoreline, and wandering albatross, the largest wingspan of any living bird, nest on the tussock slopes above.

On a larger ship, a beach like this is shared with hundreds of people, landing in shifts. We limit our voyages to 36 guests, so everyone goes ashore together, and the colony is never crowded.

Penguins, seals, or albatross: which would you want to see first? 👇

🔗 Discover the secrets of South Georgia — Explore our South Georgia Expedition Micro Cruises 🌊 https://zurl.co/wtjAQ

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