Ponant and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have earned recognition on Condé Nast Traveler’s Bright Ideas in Travel 2026 list, highlighting their collaborative efforts to transform how the public perceives and protects the Earth’s most remote polar regions.
Each journey to the Arctic or Antarctica offers a humbling reminder of the sheer magnitude and fragility of these polar landscapes. Documenting these environments presents a persistent challenge for visual storytellers. While photographing charismatic animals and marine megafauna is common, capturing the true scale of wide, open landscapes often requires a human or animal subject for perspective. Photographers frequently feel that their work captures only a fraction of the vast reality before them.
Yet, environmental photographers continue to document these spaces, driven by the belief that a compelling photograph or video can foster a deep sense of care for places most people will never visit. This challenge touches on an age-old question in conservation, which is particularly poignant regarding the poles. Many people picture these regions as empty, remote, and largely irrelevant to their daily lives. While individuals can intellectually grasp that the Arctic Circle and Antarctica are fragile and endangered, bridging the gap between knowing these facts and feeling an emotional connection to their plight remains difficult.
To help close this gap between knowing and feeling, luxury cruise line Ponant and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joined forces in a partnership first launched in 2025. In May of this year, the two organizations unveiled the Polar Ocean Image Collection. Released for free through the Ocean Image Bank, the library features more than 500 images from the Arctic and Antarctic. Many of these visuals originate from Ponant’s own Polar Studio team, supplemented by contributions from global photographers. According to Richard Vevers, who leads WHOI’s efforts as the director of its Ocean Communication Academy and Room 71, more than 200 photographers donated their work for non-commercial use.
A browse through the Polar Ocean Image Collection reveals an array of icebergs, polar bears, penguins, and endless shades of blue. One particularly striking image is a "splitshot"—a half-submerged iceberg dwarfing a nearby sailboat—which captures the traditional feeling of human smallness beside something vastly larger than ourselves. The visual is deeply transportive, evoking a shiver of excitement, wonder, and awe.
Firsthand experiences in these regions reinforce the urgency of such imagery. On early visits to Antarctica aboard Ponant vessels, travelers frequently witness a continent filled with life and movement, from fledgling penguins curiously inspecting camera lenses to seal pups hauling themselves over legs entirely unbothered by human presence. Icebergs too massive to fit into wide-angle camera frames drift past, leaving memories seared into the minds of those who visit. Great photographers are able to capture these moments and allow people who are not physically present to experience them firsthand.
To spearhead these communication efforts, WHOI operates Room 71, a dedicated storytelling and communications unit whose cryptic name references the fact that 71 percent of the planet is covered by oceans. The unit aims to reimagine how technology is designed to engage new audiences. Prior to his work with WHOI, Vevers spent a decade in advertising before founding The Ocean Agency, an international nonprofit for marine conservation, inspired by what he describes as an ocean epiphany.
Vevers maintains that experiencing a place in an immersive way—whether by traveling there directly or through powerful photography and film—inspires people to care more deeply about its protection. He points to his experience making Chasing Coral, a documentary that chronicled the story of the world’s bleaching reefs and translated an ecological crisis into something audiences could deeply feel. Although difficult to measure precisely, Vevers believes imagery can directly influence policy. During COP21 in Paris, images of coral bleaching were widely utilized to emphasize the critical importance of keeping global warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius target to save coral reefs, a goal that was ultimately adopted.
Despite the power of visual media, Vevers notes a distinct gap when it comes to Antarctica and the Arctic. The poles suffer from what he terms a "white nothing" problem—a widespread misconception that frigid landscapes are entirely empty and lifeless, making it difficult for the public to build an emotional connection with them. Scientists frequently struggle to secure the funding necessary to bring top-tier photographers into the field to capture the true essence of these environments. The sheer variety of images included in the new collection is what sets it apart and helps combat this misconception.
Compounding this detachment is the fact that fewer than 0.01 percent of the world’s population will ever visit Antarctica or the North Pole, along with how these regions are traditionally depicted on standard maps. Alongside their photography initiative, WHOI has promoted an unconventional piece of cartography: the Spilhaus projection, an ocean-centered map originally developed in 1942.
To visualize this projection, one can imagine a standard world map taken apart at its seams, with Antarctica placed directly at the center. This perspective reveals how the world’s seas are intimately connected, with the South Pacific spilling into the Southern Ocean, which in turn reaches into the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. It demonstrates that the world is covered by one giant body of water, with familiar landmasses pushed to the edges.
As terrestrial animals, humans are biologically designed to understand the world above water rather than the world below, a bias reflected in traditional maps that place land in the middle and treat oceans as leftover space. By refocusing the map on the ocean, Antarctica shifts from being perceived as the isolated bottom of the world to becoming the beating heart of the planet, central rather than peripheral to life on Earth.
Out on the water, this interconnected perspective takes a literal form. Under the scientific guidance of WHOI glaciologist Dr. Catherine Walker, WHOI-MIT doctoral students have embarked on multiple research voyages to Antarctica aboard Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot. As the only passenger ship with Polar Class 2 certification, the vessel is capable of breaking multi-year ice up to eight to ten feet thick or more, equipping it to navigate shifting glaciers and uncharted ice floes. Scientists aboard have measured the height of glacier fronts where ice meets the ocean and deployed LiDAR technology to model the breakup rate of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, gathering vital data that is typically difficult to capture via satellite.
The partnership between Ponant and WHOI has evolved into a testing ground for innovative technology designed to be as engaging as it is functional. Current initiatives include an underwater robot modeled after a leatherback sea turtle that surveys environments beneath the ice and studies the behaviors of large marine animals. Additionally, an infrared whale-spotting camera can flag whales up to three miles away, providing useful research data that helps commercial vessels avoid deadly whale strikes.
These technological and educational efforts build toward the planned launch in December 2027 of "Antarctica: Ocean (Re)Imagined," a dedicated WHOI and Ponant expedition onboard Le Lyrial. This convergence of technology, travel, citizen science, and interactive programming is designed to transform how guests view the ocean, turning casual curiosity into active stewardship. Organizers view the poles as just the starting point, with long-term ambitions to expand into the deep ocean and beyond, reinforcing the fundamental reality that these are not separate regions at all, but one single, interconnected ocean.
While the conservation world has debated for decades whether imagery alone can effectively close the gap between seeing and caring, Vevers acknowledges that his conviction stems as much from personal experience as it does from hard data. Nevertheless, it remains a bet that WHOI and its partners are firmly committed to making.
