The Nisshin Maru: not to Catch but to Scrap
The Japanese government has announced that they are considering “major repairs” of the Nisshin Maru, the mother factory ship of the whaling fleet that works in Antarctica in the name of science. The work will be superficial because the Nisshin Maru should be ready in time for the departure to Antarctica which happens every year in November. The Japanese Fisheries Agency hopes that this fast cosmetic repair will resist 10 years.
However, the Nisshin Maru is old. She is fragile. She was launched in 1987.
Life jacket for the French Ambassador in the Arctic
Once more, he could not say no to the invitation of a ship owner with a polar cruise. Michel Rocard, French ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic poles embarks September 4th from Iqaluit in the Canadian arctic for eleven days aboard the Boréal.
This voyage is not without risks for the passengers and the environment. A year ago exactly, in the same waters, the Clipper Adventurer ran aground on a reef. The 197 passengers and crew members had to wait forty-eight hours on the ship, in distress, before beginning to be evacuated. Means of assistance and salvage from Canada like other coastal states of the icy Arctic Ocean are inadequate. The ship owner sued the Canadian government for mistakes in the mapping surveys. Today, only ten percent of the Arctic Ocean is correctly charted.
There is movement in the Arctic
On July 7th 2011 a maritime border agreement between Russia and Norway entered into force. This new dividing line ends a 44 year dispute over 175,000 square kilometres in the Barents and Arctic seas and opens up the former so called “grey zone” for exploration. The day following the entry into force Norway deployed the Harrier Explorer (Imo 7807380) a seismic vessel to start exploration in the zone.
This border agreement follows a Treaty on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic on May 12th 2011. It is the first legally binding treaty under the circumpolar intergovernmental forum the Arctic Council and was signed in Nuuk Greenland by Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States of America. The Treaty so called the “Nuuk Agreement” is focused on saving lives. It is an important step towards policy-making as there is an increasing amount of traffic venturing into the Arctic, which includes tankers and passenger ships of which a number were not constructed to navigate in ice-covered waters.
Whales, Nagoya Blabla
The Conference on Biodiversity taking place in Nagoya Japan ends today while, in November, the Japanese whaling fleet will leave for Antarctica to catch 1,000 whales. Since 1986, when the moratorium on commercial whaling entered into force Japan has killed, in the name of science, 13,210 whales of which close to 10,000 were caught in Antarctica, a whale sanctuary since 1994. Considering the state of the Japanese whaling fleet, the entire Antarctic ecosystem is threatened by an oil spill.
The mother-ship, Nisshin Maru, ex Chikuzen Maru was launched in 1987. She was initially a stern trawler in American waters. She was quickly converted into a whaling factory ship. She works in the Antarctic Ocean without a double hull or reinforcement against ice and with only one engine. In February 2007, while the Nisshin Maru was sailing in the Ross Sea, a major explosion occurred aboard killing a crewmember and immobilising the vessel leaving her to drift for several days in the ice-infested Southern Seas. According to New Zealand authorities, the incident is one of the most serious to have occurred in the region. The Japanese did not immediately send out an SOS. The Nisshin Maru is also a little tanker with a capacity of holding 2,600 tons of fuel.
A new contaminated site in Arctic ? (*)
Since Friday 27th August, the Arctic Ocean is threatened by the Clipper Adventurer. This ferry converted into a cruise ship was built in 1975 in ex-Yugoslavia. She is flying the Bahamian flag. She ran aground a reef along the Nunavut shoreline. Salvage operations are considered.
The state of Bahamas has not signed the MARPOL annex IV on the prevention of pollution by sewage from ships. The owner is based in Miami.
This warning incident demonstrates that all nautical and juridical precautionary measures are not implemented to avoid pollution in the Arctic Ocean.
Arctic Alarm
Fifty six years ago today, the Andrea Doria, the Italian star of the transatlantic cruise liner sunk off the coast of New York taking the lives of 47 passengers.
