The Green­peace-ship ‘Espe­ran­za’ which is curr­ent­ly sai­ling in the waters around Spits­ber­gen has repea­ted­ly vio­la­ted the new pilo­ta­ge regu­la­ti­ons, being step-by-step estab­lished sin­ce July 2012.

The ‘Espe­ran­za’ is pre­sent around Spits­ber­gen this sum­mer to call atten­ti­on to the impact of cli­ma­te chan­ge to the arc­tic and to pro­test against the expan­si­on of oil explo­ra­ti­on to the Barents Sea. As a pro­mi­nent sup­port­er for this cam­paign among­st others the Bri­tish actress Emma Thomp­son was aboard.

In the end of July it was noti­ced that the ship vio­la­ted the new pilo­ta­ge regu­la­ti­ons on Spits­ber­gen for seve­ral times. For a round-trip which was accom­pa­nied by the actress Emma Thomp­son the­r­e­fo­re a pilot was taken aboard. In the Midd­le of August the cap­tain of the ‘Espe­ran­za’ then again acted against the regu­la­ti­ons as he led the ship towards Lon­gye­ar­by­en wit­hout a pilot. As befo­re, the inci­dent was repor­ted to the Sys­sel­man­nen and this time the cap­tain had to pay a fine of 50.000 Kro­ner.

The Sys­sel­man­nen and the Nor­we­gi­an Kyst­verk reg­ret that it was just Green­peace who vio­la­ted a regu­la­ti­on which actual­ly is sup­port­ed by the orga­niza­ti­on. In the same spi­rit Green­peace expres­sed their reg­ret. Green­peace app­re­cia­tes the estab­lish­ment of pilo­ta­ge regu­la­ti­ons on Spits­ber­gen and, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion in mind, gene­ral­ly sup­ports regu­la­ti­ons that con­tri­bu­te to safe­ty in the mari­ti­me traf­fic. In the inci­dents in the end of July Green­peace was not awa­re of the fact that their ship was alre­a­dy affec­ted by the new regu­la­ti­ons, espe­ci­al­ly as they had an own ice-navi­ga­tor aboard sup­port­ing the cap­tain. In the recent inci­dent in August the cap­tain had, as he said, wai­ted 1.5 hours for the pilot who was delay­ed. After that he deci­ded to sail towards Lon­gye­ar­by­en wit­hout a pilot.

Com­pul­so­ry pilo­ta­ge gets step-by-step estab­lished on Spits­ber­gen sin­ce the 1st of July 2012 (see also Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com news from July 2012). Curr­ent­ly, for the sea­son 2014, it affects ves­sels with a length of 70 meters or more and pas­sen­ger ves­sels with a length of 24 meters or more, except expe­di­ti­on crui­se ves­sels. In the sea­son 2015 the­re will no lon­ger be such excep­ti­ons and the regu­la­ti­ons will be the same as on the Nor­we­gi­an main­land.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten, Kyst­ver­ket