As marine shipping increases in the Arctic Ocean, the issue of marine safety becomes paramount, and this is where the International Polar Code comes into play. So what is the International Polar Code? It sets regulations for shipping in polar regions, both the Arctic and Antarctic, principally relating to ice navigation and ship design. Now it was adopted by an organization called the International Marine Organization, the IMO, in 2014, and it entered into force in January of 2017. This image here is just showing the front cover of the Polar Code book, if you want to call it, showing a big icebreaker on the front. It looks like one of the Russian icebreakers. Now what is the International Marine Organization? It's a specialized agency of the UN. It has global standard setting authority on marine safety, security, and environmental performance of international shipping. And it's real main role is to create a fair and balanced regulatory framework. So to summarize how this works, the Polar Code requires ships entering polar waters to apply for a polar ship certificate with different classifications, these are A, B, and C. And these relate to the capability to operate in ice. A being the most stringent, in other words, these are the most capable ships, B, being less capable, and C, even less capable. And it also requires an accounting for an anticipated range of operating conditions in polar waters. Now here's a question. Are fishing vessels exempt from the Polar Code? The answer is they are. Now this has actually been a complaint of the Polar Code that it really should include fishing vessels because that's a lot of vessels that are up in the Arctic waters. But no, fishing vessels right now, anyhow, are exempt from the Polar Code. Now these different categories. Here's an example of a category A ship with a lot of capability in ice. This is the Timofey Guzhenko, which is in icebreaking tanker. Now we're not talking about icebreakers here. Those are specialized icebreaking ships. Here we're talking really about commercial ships. And here's this category A ship, an icebreaking tanker, a tanker that has considerable capabilities to operate in ice and really can break ice. Here's a category B ship. Here's just another example, a still fairly capable, but less capable. This is the Miss Marilene Tide, and so this is kind of intermediate compared to the Marvellous, a category C ship, a bulk carrier which really doesn't have all that much capability to operate in icy conditions. You wouldn't want to take a ship like this out into two meter ice, for example. Now I'll mention Aker Arctic here. Aker Arctic, it's a company that builds specialized ships to handle ice conditions. So here's just kind of a model of one of them, and you can see the propeller design, the propulsion design. It's designed for it to be extremely maneuverable in ice. The point being is that there are companies like Aker Arctic that really specialize in building ice-capable vessels. Now does the Polar Code contains strict standards aimed at limiting marine pollution from ships? Again, the answer is no, and this is another complaint of the Polar Code that it really should be aimed at limiting marine pollution from ships. But no, it does not do that. Now what does the Polar Code mean for ship safety? All sorts of things, it relates to all sorts of things like equipment, the clothing that you wear, emergency suits, or survival suits, ship design and construction, operations, and manning in polar waters. It's really there for marine safety because hey, as the Arctic becomes more and more accessible and we see more and more ships traversing the Arctic, accidents are going to happen, that's for sure. But we want to minimize those accidents, so thank you.
