Shipping Routes

The Arctic is also an attractive transport route. The allure of Arctic shipping is undeniable: the Arctic route is 6500 nautical miles, or 40%, shorter than the trip through the Suez or Panama Canals from either Europe to Asia or from Alaska to the Eastern Seaboard. There are navigational hazards, though: even without significant ice pack only two of the five shipping routes through the legendary Northwest Passage, which according to the Sailing Directions of Arctic Canada “spans the North American Arctic from Davis Strait and Baffin Bay in the east to Bering Strait in the west”, are viable for deep draft ships. The historically ice-blocked passage has excited and frustrated mariners for centuries. On August 21, 2007, though, the ice pack hit lows nearly a quarter below the previous record set in the summer of 2005. For the first time in history, officials opened the Northwest Passage to cargo vessels without an icebreaker. In the summer of 2007 eighty-six ships entered the waters along the Northwest Passage and eleven made the full transit. On August 25, 2008, ice melt once again led officials to declare the Northwest Passage open to cargo vessels without an icebreaker. In the aftermath of the record summers of 2007 and 2008, northern sea routes that can cut thousands of miles off of voyages seem more tangible than ever.

The Arctic shipping routes are also vital to companies that hope to extract the region's vast hydrocarbon resources. However, at the same time that it provides opportunities for shippers and mining companies, increased shipping traffic in geographically vast and dangerous waters in which maintaining effective control of shipping is difficult under the best of circumstances poses intrinsic dangers to the Arctic region, its peoples and its valuable ecosystems. While predictions for a seasonally ice-free Northwest Passage range from six to fifty years, the high-stakes debate over how to divide and control the region is already beginning to play out.