A Scientist’s Close Call with Hantavirus Aboard the M.V. Hondius Cruise
Six weeks ago, on a cold and overcast afternoon in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina, a scientist with a passion for birds boarded the M.V. Hondius, a polar cruise ship with a fortified hull. More than a hundred passengers and sixty-one crew members were scheduled to visit some of the most remote places on Earth: the Antarctic territories of South Georgia Island and Gough Island; Tristan da Cunha, known as the world’s most isolated inhabited location; a landmass called Inaccessible Island; and St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled. In early May, the Hondius would dock in the African archipelagic nation of Cape Verde. “It’s literally the trip of a lifetime,” the scientist later told me.
During the expedition’s first ten days, the ship navigated a strong storm, with ocean swells reaching two to three metres. Still, the sights were remarkable. “Lot of good remote birds!” the scientist texted friends. Then one of them sent him a link to a news story about an outbreak of a hantavirus, a potentially deadly pathogen traditionally carried by rodents, which had been reported on a cruise ship. “Please tell me you’re not on this ship,” the friend wrote. The Hondius was now in a different kind of storm—an ordeal reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, with passengers mysteriously falling ill, health workers wearing hazmat suits, and governments imposing quarantines.
As the crisis unfolded, I began trading WhatsApp messages with the scientist multiple times a day. (I agreed to omit identifying details because he was concerned about being subjected to a media frenzy.) On May 8th, we spoke for almost five and a half hours. At one point, he told me about photographs that he took while waiting to board the ship. “I’m looking at these photos of people in line who were strangers,” he said. “Now I know the faces of every single one. Some of them are friends, and some of them are, unfortunately, dead.” Below is the rest of his story, which has been edited for length and clarity.
“On the first day, we’re shown a weather map, and there is this big area of deep purple. ‘Purple is bad,’ the expedition leader tells us. A big storm. I’ve been to Antarctica. I have experienced days where the ship was tilting more than forty degrees, and I expect a repeat of that. In fact, the captain is very skillful, and for the next ten days he manages to mostly stay in the eye of the storm. When the sway gets too risky, the captain closes some of the outer decks. But I was expecting far worse.
“April 9th and 10th are sea days, with a lot of icebergs. On April 12th, right after breakfast, the captain makes an announcement on the speaker system, and we are told to come to the lounge. His voice is very serious; I think we have some kind of mechanical emergency. Instead, the captain and the expedition leader say that we had a passenger who got sick in the past few days, and our ship’s doctor has been working very hard. He hasn’t slept for forty-eight hours. They did everything they could, but, unfortunately, the passenger is deceased. Everyone gasps.
“The nearest harbor is about eight days back, in Ushuaia, and several days the other way, in Cape Town. We are literally in the middle of the South Atlantic, as far from land as possible. It’s really an unfortunate place to die. The only logical place to go is Tristan da Cunha, which is about two and a half days away. Everybody thinks this man had a heart attack, or some preëxisting condition. I go to the expedition leader and I say, ‘This is not the first time for you, is it?’ He shakes his head and says, ‘Oh, no, this happens regularly on these trips.’ They have an existing protocol. Nobody thought this was an infectious disease.
“A few days later, the man’s wife, M., a lovely Dutch lady, gave a speech to the passengers. She was emotional, her voice shaking, but composed. She said that her husband’s biggest dream was to see albatross, and he was so happy on South Georgia when he saw king-penguin colonies and albatross. She was very graceful. Basically, she told us that the best thing we all can do now for his memory is to keep going and enjoy all this wildlife that he lived for.
“The mood is sombre. Most people are very quiet. But the best cure is outside, on the decks, with the ocean and the wildlife and seabirds. We are in this beautiful landscape; if you look around, there’s no way anybody would guess there’s a dead man on the ship. I see a sooty albatross, which has a goofy smile—a pale-yellow line on its lower mandible that turns up. It’s hard to see it without also having a smile on your face. We watch a sunset, and I think, Well, I guess this is life, and at least he died doing what he loved.
“On April 13th, we see Tristan da Cunha at 7:06 A.M. It’s an island that appears straight out of the ocean—the top of a volcano. It’s spectacular: sheer cliffs, a lot of volcanic-lava-type rock. We see this little village on the skirt of the volcano. You can see the lava field from the most recent eruption.
“We can’t leave the body at Tristan da Cunha because it has no airport. We will have to take this man all the way to St. Helena—but first we have to get some paperwork. We are not allowed to dock at Tristan da Cunha, so we are just waiting outside for the islanders to come certify the situation. They keep saying, ‘We’re waiting for the seas to calm down.’ In the end they say, ‘We are going to come tomorrow morning,’ which disappoints people because we lose a day.
“I think they are a little too cautious. But, later, it makes sense to me, because I read the history of Tristan da Cunha. In the nineteenth century, every time a ship showed up, all the able men of the island would immediately go to trade something. In 1885, almost all the working men went to a ship and were never seen again. Some of the locals believed the ship took the men and enslaved them. Most likely, they just capsized and died, leaving behind an island of widows. They have this historic trauma.”
“On the way to St. Helena, M. looks like she’s coping well. I see her sitting one morning in the library, and I give her my condolences. She again says that her husband realized his dream. We get to St. Helena, and she is out and about, participating in all the activities, including a plantation-house tour. But people who are with her later say that she is not in good shape. She doesn’t leave the van much. We just think it’s heartbreak.
“One afternoon, as I get off a Zodiac [inflatable boat] in St. Helena, ready to walk around town looking for birds, I see M. She is in a separate Zodiac with some crew members. A local official is driving her to the police station for paperwork. I try to make eye contact, but she is looking straight ahead. That’s the last time I see her. Later, people tell me that the police interrogated her like a potential suspect—not harshly, just because of standard procedure. But it was a surprise to me. People tell me that took a hard toll on her. The next day, she takes a commercial flight to Johannesburg.
“I am very happy in St. Helena, because I see a whale shark. I jump in the water with my camera, take a few photos. I also see a St. Helena plover. I’m putting together these parallel time lines now, and it’s crazy. While I’m doing these things, M. is flying to South Africa, and all these people are potentially getting infected.
“On April 27th, we are bird-watching outside when there is an announcement. We’re a little annoyed. Often, with these birds, you go inside for ten minutes and you miss something rare. My friend and I ignore the announcement. Then one of the senior staff says, ‘You gotta come in.’ We roll our eyes and go in.
“There is this woman who has worked as a military contractor in Iraq, and she’s dealt with a lot. She kind of cracks this morbid joke: ‘Uh-oh. Our body count has just gone up.’ The last thing I’m expecting is another death. I’m just thinking statistically, like a scientist. People don’t drop like flies in the course of two weeks.
“The expedition leader tells us that M. took a flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, and, when she was at the airport for a flight to Amsterdam, she was deemed not fit to fly. She got very upset. After they took her off the plane, she collapsed and was immediately taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, she passed away.
“I remember slamming the table and going, ‘Fuck!’ I still can’t believe it. This is like a Shakespearean tragedy. I thought, I guess you really can die of a broken heart. As a scientist, I’ve heard about ‘broken-heart syndrome.’ That night, I look it up—takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the left ventricle, usually the result of severe emotional or physical stress. We still don’t suspect infection.
“While this is happening, a friend on the boat falls sick. He’s ex-military, a birder and a massive guy, six-four. I’ve noticed him lying on a couch in the lounge. I thought he was just sleeping, but his partner says he’s feeling crappy. Then we have yet another announcement saying we have a really sick passenger, and we need to drop him off at Ascension Island. I go down to the clinic to say goodbye. He is on oxygen, but he’s sitting up and smiling. From a distance, I say goodbye to him. He’s flown from Ascension to Jo’burg, immediately hospitalized, put on a ventilator. One day we hear he’s doing better, the other day he’s not doing well again.
“Nobody’s thinking anything crazy—maybe some type of flu, COVID. We ask a doctor on the ship, What the hell does this guy have? She says they tested him in Jo’burg for hundreds of things. Everything is negative, so for multiple days this is a mystery.”
“A few days go by. The plan is that, on May 3rd, the official end of the trip, we’ll dock in Cape Verde. On May 4th, in the early morning, we’ll go look for land birds. I am going to stay in Cape Verde another week to look for the Raso lark, one of the most critically endangered birds in the world. But, on May 2nd, there’s another announcement. I don’t remember the details. It’s, like, fucking shock after shock; you just kind of get numb to it, I guess.
“They say they finally found what was wrong with my friend. After testing and testing, it’s hantavirus. Once again, I’m, like, This is ridiculous. I realize I would not make a good infectious-disease investigator, because every announcement I’m, like, ‘Fuck!’ Hanta-fucking-virus!
“Most people have never heard of hantavirus. But I’d once worked a cleaning job in the Rockies. They’d said, ‘Oh, there’s this new disease called hantavirus, and you can get it from inhaling dried, aerosolized rodent feces. When you sweep after dinner, we recommend you wear a mask.’
“On the ship, all of us look up hanta and realize this has up to a forty-per-cent death rate. People really sober up, but there’s no panic. Everyone has masks and stays away from each other, but it’s not like you hear cries in the corner. We’re mostly outdoors, watching, keeping to the routine. 7:30 A.M. wake-up call, 8 A.M. breakfast. You can have breakfast delivered to your room. Everybody keeps saying, ‘We are literally in the same boat.’ Gallows humor.
“On May 2nd, they tell us that an eighty-year-old German woman got sick. She rapidly deteriorated in the ship’s clinic. It’s the third death.
“I’m thinking we have a rat infestation on the ship. But here’s a very crucial detail. This ship is an expedition cruise, with state-of-the-art biosafety measures. On at least one of the landings, we have rat-sniffing dogs. There are rat traps constantly running, day and night. The reason is that the moment rodents make it to these precious sub-Antarctic islands, they will wipe out the seabird colonies. It’s game over—they are like sitting fluffy chicks.
“I am hoping against hope that this ship is not actually rat-free. Otherwise, having three deaths like that, with multiple sick people in the course of a couple of weeks—the only other option is the rare Andes strain of hantavirus, with human-to-human transmission. And the Andes strain is bad fucking news.
“I don’t know if it’s denial, or just that events develop so fast, but we are still planning to get off in Cape Verde as scheduled. But once they say hanta I’m starting to think that it’s not going to be a normal landing—that they’ll be testing us, and we’ll probably lose a day or two. I think maybe seventy-two hours, max, for things to settle.
“We get to Cape Verde late at night. People are talking about how we may not be allowed to enter the harbor. I look out and it’s just dark; we’re in the middle of the sea. I walk around the ship until I see the lights of Cape Verde, but they’re far away. They are so scared of us that they made us anchor miles out, in the open ocean. I realize, This is serious. We’re not getting on this island.”
“There are other developments. The ship’s only doctor—a very nice guy who has been running around taking care of people—is sick. There is another passenger whom people haven’t seen in a while. A woman who had spent time with the deceased German woman is also at risk. And, of course, the deceased woman’s remains have to be evacuated.
“We spend so many days at Cape Verde, just to persuade the authorities to take our sick passengers. The thing about hantavirus, especially the Andes strain, is that you can go from healthy to dead in twenty-four hours. The lungs start filling up with fluid. Normally, they should not deny us, but they are treating the ship like when there’s plague. We are back to the Middle Ages, man.
“Two boats keep coming out. The bigger one is a fireboat. The first time it approaches, I am eye to eye with the captain. I nod to him and fold my hands, to say thank you, and he smiles and nods. Initially, they are casual. Their captain doesn’t have a mask; the other guys have masks. One guy has a hairnet, but that’s about it. Every day, they get more and more covered. By the end, they are like space aliens in multiple layers of plastic.
“The officials from Cape Verde come in the boat to assess our sick passengers—five, six, maybe seven times. They are delaying and delaying. Every time they come, we think, O.K., they’re going to take the patients. Soon it becomes apparent that Cape Verde does not want to take them.
“The crew is upset. Their demeanor and professionalism haven’t changed since Day One; they’re the unsung heroes. Now they think this goes against humanitarian laws of the sea. Cape Verde will not take the patients unless they can be evacuated immediately. Boat to shore to ambulance to plane, and the plane takes off immediately: that’s their condition. It’s like they don’t want the sick passengers on their soil for more than fifteen minutes.
“Everyone is looking for the evacuation planes. The first finally comes on Tuesday, May 5th. People are relieved and smiling—but we’re not cheering, because we’ve had so many dashed hopes. Things have just been getting worse and worse, and nobody can cheer anymore.
“One day, right before sunset, we see some Cape Verde swifts distantly, just as specks whizzing by. The next morning, some of us wake up at 6 A.M. and look with telescopes at the spot where we had seen them. In the good morning light, we are able to see swifts. That’s probably the last bird I’m going to see on this trip. In the Canary Islands, there are thirteen new species for me, but the locals are so afraid of us that they are going to wrap us in plastic and rush us from Zodiacs straight to the shore to the plane. All the birders are now discussing: Are there any new birds we might be able to see without binoculars, while wrapped up in plastic and being moved at eighty kilometres an hour? That’s the main concern of birders. Not if they’ll die of hanta but if we will be able to see any species from our life list during our evacuation.”
“We wake up in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. We’re afraid to open the blinds and curtains. There’s a whole bunch of press with long lenses pointed at us. We are sitting in the dark room like circus animals. This is the first time in forty days we haven’t been able to go out outside.
“Everyone has to wear hairnets, full plastic gear, and masks. We are given one white plastic bag to carry anything we can fit. I’m anxious because I’ll have to leave some very expensive gear behind. The ship will sail to Rotterdam, and then our stuff will be sterilized and presumably sent to us. Who knows when we’ll get it. Basically, we seem like we have the same rights as prisoners right now. The part that’s especially anxiety-inducing is that we don’t know what’s going to happen to us in the next six or eight weeks. We’ve been on the high seas and islands, and it was beautiful. Now reality has hit. We’ve been on the ship for exactly forty days. I just realized this morning the irony of going into quarantena, which comes from keeping people on a boat for forty days during the Middle Ages.
“The announcement comes. We are told to go to the Deck 3 Zodiac doors to get on an evacuation boat. We are covered in personal protective equipment by W.H.O. doctors. It’s all plastic, and I’m sweating already. We wait for ten to fifteen minutes. The boat comes with the Guardia Civil dressed in full P.P.E.
“We approach the dock, where Spanish authorities are in full biosafety containment suits, looking very serious. We cannot move unless we are told to do so. We get off the boat one by one, and then walk up a metal plank. We are sprayed with disinfectant and ordered to get on a sixteen-passenger minibus with plastic-covered seats. Only three of us, plus an official, are allowed in it. The driver’s section is fully sealed off from us. As we start driving to the airport, we pass by dozens of police vehicles, ambulances, press vehicles. I still can’t believe this is happening.”
The scientist would go on to test negative for a hantavirus. On May 10th, he sent me a WhatsApp message from a runway in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands: