Russia's Shallow Arctic Seas and Straits

The Northern Sea Route cuts 39% off the shipping distance between Hamburg and Yokohama, but that doesn't help much if you have to make four separate trips to move the same amount of stuff. 

According to researchers at the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory (CRREL, in 1996), depth limitations in important straits and ports limit the size of ships that can use the route to vessels with a cargo capacity 25% of the vessels using more southerly routes.  It would take one of these ships four trips to move the cargo that a larger vessel can move in one trip.

The map shows that the Northern Sea Route is is a complex of alternative and roughly parallel routes that start in the Barents Sea, run across northern Russia, and converge to pass through the Bering Strait.  Russia's Arctic shoreline fronts a number of separate seas, each divided from the next by islands and peninsulas.  Vessels move from one sea to another by passing through various straits between the islands and mainland.  

Many of the straits are shallow.  For example, the straits between the Laptev and East Siberian Seas have minimum depths of 6.7 meters and 13 meters.

There is an option to travel to the north of all the islands.  This avoids the straits and their depth restrictions and is actually shorter than more inshore routes.  I gather that traffic on the outer routes tends to be more restricted by ice.

Here's what the reports say:

Shallow depths in several key locations effectively limit ships on the route at the current time to 20,000 dwt tons and less.... Transit shippers must consider shallow waters overlying the far-reaching continental shelf, which extends seaward for hundreds of kilometers, and shallow passages between land barriers separating the various seas. The straits through the Novosibirskiy Islands, Sannikova and Dmitrya Lapteva, are 13 and 7 m deep, respectively. The high-latitude route variation to the north of the islands has no such depth limitation, but at the present time it is not reliably navigable to ensure regular passage. Cabotage and river shipping must also contend with shallow waters due to heavy silt deposition at coastal deltas and in riverine channels. Many coastal and river ports can only be approached by ships with shallow draft. Dredging is necessary at the deltas and within upriver shipping channels to maintain passage. Efficient cargo transportation in this region therefore currently favors the use of ships with high carrying capacity, reduced draft, and technological features (structural, mechanical, navigational, etc.) that allow some ability to operate independent of icebreaker escort. (Mulherin)

The ice-strengthened ships using the NSR have less than 25% of the cargo capacity of ships using the conventional warm-water routes, due to draft limitations in key straits and ports.... (Mulherin et al.)

The ships in current use on the NSR have approximately 25% of the carrying capacity of cargo vessels using the traditional warm-water trade routes. This means that it requires at least four trips along the NSR to deliver the same amount of cargo that can be delivered in one trip through the Suez Canal, for example. The distance advantage enjoyed by the NSR is thus eliminated if larger ships cannot be used.... (Mulherin et al.)

The Arctic seas themselves tend to be shallow.  Here's a bathymetric map:

The two reports cited here are The Northern Sea Route.  Its Development and Evolving State of Operations in the 1990s by Nathan Mulherin, and Development and Results of a Northern Sea Route Transit Model, by Muluherin et al.  These studies were published in 1996.

Comments

[nintendo r4]

"Does anyone else remember the Epic Voyage of the Super Tanker, S.S. Manhatten, crossing the Arctic Ocean from New York to Prudhoe Bay in 1969? This was the first commerical transit of the "Northwest Passage".

In my 2004 book, "Alaska Agonistes - The Age of Petroleum," I wrote extensively about the historic voyages through the Northwest Passage of the S.S. Manhattan on which I sailed, including this: The Manhattan "completed her round trip between New York and Alaska on a pre-determined schedule, demonstrating the 'operational' feasibility of commercial shipping across the top of the continent which someday will be a routine occurence, chopping thousands of miles off the trip between Europe and Asia." The Mnhattan was the first ship of any kind to transit the Passage from both directions, east and west.