Offi­ci­al­ly, nau­ti­cal safe­ty is important enough to the Nor­we­gi­an sta­te that com­pul­so­ry pilo­ta­ge is about to be intro­du­ced. It is obvious­ly howe­ver not important enough to con­ti­nue char­ting of the coas­tal waters. Lar­ge are­as, espe­ci­al­ly in the remo­te parts of the archi­pe­la­go, are still most­ly bad­ly or even unchar­ted. Char­ting the­se waters would be far more useful to nau­ti­cal safe­ty than (com­pul­so­ry) pilo­ta­ge – wit­hout good charts, the pilot won’t know the dan­gers eit­her. Nevert­hel­ess, it has recent­ly been deci­ded to give Nor­we­gi­an coas­tal waters prio­ri­ty this sum­mer.

Con­side­ring the cur­rent acti­vi­ty level, it will take ano­ther 40 to 80 years from now until all coas­tal waters around the Spits­ber­gen archi­pe­la­go will be com­ple­te­ly char­ted with modern methods.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten