The data is from Appendix F to the proceedings of the Arctic Marine Transport Workshop. The figure only includes complete transits through September 2004. There were 99 of these. If a transit took several years, it was assigned to the year it was completed. Submarine transits have not been counted because only two have been reported.
The first transit was Roald Amundsen in the GjΓΈa in 1903-06. We've got transits by ice breakers, research vessels, yachts, cruise ships, drilling ships. The first cruise ship, the Lindblad Explorer, transited in 1984. Between this transit and the end of the data series, 24 vessels are listed as carrying passengers (so I assume these are cruises).
Why did traffic pick up from the late 1970s? Possibilities: (a) increased resource development activity; (b) increasing incomes and interest in the environment generates a demand for Arctic adventure cruises; (c) advances in marine technology?; (d) Russian icebreakers become active giving cruises from 1992 - so, end of Soviet Union? (the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov transited 12 times between 1992 and 2004); (e) easier navigation associated with climate change?.
The sources for these data include a compilation by Thomas Pullen and Charles Swithinbank published in 1991 (Cambridge: Polar Record, 27 [163]; 365-367), subsequent information from Brian McDonald (Canadian Coast Guard) who maintained and expanded the compilation (completing it for a Centenary Edition in 2003), details provided by Captains Patrick Toomey (CCG) and Lawson Brigham (USCG), some personal observations acquired during voyages aboard Kapitan Khlebnikov and Kapitan Dranitsyn, and many published works.
The definition of transits is rigorous:
These transits proceed to or from the Atlantic Ocean (Labrador Sea) in or out of the eastern approaches of the Canadian Arctic archipelago (Lancaster Sound or Foxe Basin), then the western approaches (McClure Strait or Amundsen Gulf), across the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean, from or to the Pacific Ocean (Bering Sea).
I don't see the Manhattan on the list. In 1969 the Manhattan traveled from the U.S. East Coast to Prudhoe Bay back, but didn't make a complete transit according to this definition. So there is significant northern activity that isn't included here.
Revised July 24 to add definition of transits and discussion of Manhattan.
climate is the thinning of the ice pack in the Arctic, and the subsequent opening of the Northwest Passage. As the Northwest Passage opens, so too will we see an upsurge in the demand for shipping.
Posted by: buy r4ds | January 26, 2010 at 08:43 PM