The Nor­we­gi­an aut­ho­ri­ty for Fishery (Fis­ke­ri­di­rek­to­ra­tet) has ope­ned an area for shrimp traw­ling that has been off limits for fishing ships until now. Hin­lo­pen­ren­na includes Hin­lo­pen strait as well as deep water are­as north and south of it.

The press release of the Fis­ke­ri­di­rek­to­ra­tet does not include any fur­ther details.

The Nor­we­gi­an Kyst­ver­ket (coas­tal and navi­ga­ti­on aut­ho­ri­ty) plans to intro­du­ce com­pul­so­ry pilo­ta­ge for most of the waters around Spits­ber­gen. Coal freigh­ters to Sveagru­a­va may have to car­ry pilots alre­a­dy in the upco­ming sum­mer of 2012. From 2014, this will app­ly to all ships lon­ger than 70 met­res and pas­sen­ger ships lon­ger than 24 met­res. Only parts of Isfjord and Bell­sund will be excluded.

Cap­ta­ins with suf­fi­ci­ent expe­ri­ence and local know­ledge can, after a test, be cer­ti­fied to be except­ed from com­pul­so­ry pilo­ta­ge. If this is prac­ti­ca­ble remains to be seen: cos­ts and fees will be high, and it should curr­ent­ly not be taken for gran­ted that tests will be available in other lan­guages than Nor­we­gi­an. Ano­ther requi­re­ment will pro­ba­b­ly be that a cer­ti­fied Cap­tain or navi­ga­ti­on offi­cer is in char­ge on the bridge at any time when the ship is moving. This will hard­ly be prac­ti­ca­ble for smal­ler ships and it does not con­tri­bu­te any­thing to nau­ti­cal safe­ty: lar­ge parts of most com­mon sai­ling rou­tes in Spits­ber­gen (Sval­bard) are nau­ti­cal­ly very easy and straight­for­ward and can easi­ly be hand­led by all navi­ga­ti­on offi­cers.

Smal­ler ships bet­ween 24 and 100 met­res, so-cal­led expe­di­ti­on crui­se ships, will be threa­ten­ed with an imme­dia­te ter­mi­na­ti­on of their acti­vi­ties: the cos­ts for pilo­ta­ge during a 10 day crui­se will be bey­ond 100,000 Euro, an amount that makes sai­ling eco­no­mic­al­ly com­ple­te­ly impos­si­ble.

Lar­ge parts of the waters around Spits­ber­gen are deep and well enough char­ted by now to allow com­pa­ra­tively easy navi­ga­ti­on. Whe­re pilots can be found who can make a noti­ceable dif­fe­rence in more dif­fi­cult waters, com­pared to what pre­sent-day Cap­ta­ins can do, remains an open ques­ti­on at the time of wri­ting. The law is sup­po­sed to enter force on 01 July 2012.

Source: Kyst­ver­ket