Well in previous videos, I've discussed the Northern Sea Route and how it's increasingly opening for business, for shipping. But given is growing importance, I think it really merits a little more focused discussion. Let's see what's going on with the Northern Sea route. As we know, the Northern Sea Route is a shortcut essentially from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or the other way round depending on how you want to look at it. We now know that as the Arctic sea ice cover begins to retreat, it has been for some time now, it's opening up more regularly during the summer season. Now of course the Northern Sea route has been utilized by Russia before that the Soviet Union for quite some time. It really is opening up more regularly now as a longer season, the ice is thinner. It's use really has increased and I think an important point is that, Russia has a fleet of icebreakers, very very capable icebreakers that support year-round use. Now this image here is an interesting one. It shows marine shipping routes, and areas in the red are where there's a lot of ship traffic. Those are aligned in the white where there's less. Well, you can see some clear patterns here in the red. You can see all kinds of traffic between the United States, North America, and Europe. You can see some of the important canals that are used in marine shipping, such as the Panama Canal or very very notably the Suez Canal, where ships can enter into the Red Sea, then pass through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean and then out into the Atlantic. Of course or could go the other way if you want. You can also see on here the Straits of Malacca. The Strait of Malacca, something I talked about before, where rite of innocent passage holds, where ships as long as it's an innocent passage can go right through there. This was an agreement under the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea. Now if you look to the north on this figure, you don't see much going on. Not a whole lot going on with the Arctic, though there's always been some. Of course there has been some. But compared to what we see down in the Atlantic and the Pacific or through the Suez and Panama Canal or the Strait of Malacca, not a lot going on. The question, of course, could that be changing? The issue comes back, of course to that we're losing the sea ice cover. You've seen this particular image before. This is showing estimates of how the ice is going to retreat over coming decades and the potential shipping routes across the Arctic. There's the Northwest Passage will talk about that later, really less viable in most respects or certainly it seems to be than the Northern Sea Route. Eventually, when we lose all the oldest summer ice, maybe the Northern Sea order doesn't matter anymore. You just go right across the Arctic Ocean but right now, the issue really is, there's more frequent opening and longer open season in the Northern Sea Route. Here is a question, when was the Northern Sea Route first conquered? Turns out it was in 1878 and 1879 by a Swedish explore Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and I've probably mispronounced that's who again, my apologies. But yeah, it was some time ago when it was first conquered, so to speak. Here's a picture of him. Very nice looking guy with his mustache and all that. He did this in the SS Vega, Staut little ship. A three master, as you can see here, nice little polar bear. This is a picture that was painted by Jacob Hagg, the SS Vega. Now, let's go back to the Suez Canal, right. Here's the Suez Canal, picture of it. You can see here's a warship passing through the Suez Canal. That's an aircraft carrier, a United States aircraft carrier. No idea which one it is. So yeah, a hell of a lot of ship traffic goes through the Suez Canal but questions are out there. The world is a bit of an unstable place at times and what if some bandits came and blew up the Suez Canal or block the Suez Canal, it happened before. Well, in that sense, if such a thing happened in Arctic route, such as the Northern Sea Route becomes more vulnerable, more attractive saying. Now, what about the Panama Canal? All right. The Panama Canal now back when it was built, during the early 1900, the size of the locks was considered to be quite adequate. But that changed because ships got bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually some got too big to go through the Panama Canal. There was a certain size of a ship, the maximum size that could go through called Panamax ships. But a lot of even bigger ships were built and they couldn't go through the Panama Canal. But that's changed because new locks have been built in the Panama Canal, which can now accommodate bigger ships like these huge cargo ships you see here, which have these huge containers on the top, stacks and stacks of containers. Now they can go through the Panama canal, some of these really big ones. Now here's a question. What size of ships in terms of length, how long they are, can the Panama Canal handle with its new locks? The answer is up to 366 meters. That's a little over 1200 feet. That is one huge ship. 1200 foot ship. The other potential answer I gave was up to 290 meters, that's 950 feet. That was the old locks. The old locks could handle ships that big. They've really expanded it out and the Panama Canal can handle really, really big ships now. But the issue comes back, what if something happens to the Panama Canal? What if there is some civil unrest or bandits come in and blow the thing up, who knows? Again, the world seems to be a bit of an unstable place these days. Again, if something like that happened, maybe in Arctic route becomes more viable. Now, the thing about the Northern Sea Route is that of course, the Russians or Soviet Union before that have been operating along it for a long, long, long, long time. There's a whole series of ports that are used, the big, big, big one in the entrance to that from the Atlantic is Murmansk, of course. But there's a whole series of ports that had been installed to support activities along the Northern Sea route. I'm just trying to illustrate that with this particular figure here. Of course, Russia has this immense fleet of icebreakers to support those operations. This includes these really very, very, extremely capable nuclear powered icebreakers. They've got a whole bunch of other ones too. Russia is very, very capable in its Arctic operations, it makes sense of course, that they have a very, very long Arctic coastline. The point is the Northern Sea Route, they've been operating on it for a long time but is getting even more economically viable. Now, this still issues here. These are still treacherous waters and even with an ice diminished Arctic Ocean, you'll typically are often need icebreaker support. These issues of shallow draft in areas and of course, Arctic weather and sea ice conditions can be very changeable, very treacherous. These are not easy waters to navigate through. But of course, Russia is very capable in handling these conditions. Now, just a little example of the things that are going on, Maersk Shipping as a huge company. They performed a trial passage with a big container ship in the summer of 2018, and they denied that the root was viable. It was only open for a few months per yea but it seems that that attitude is now changing and Maersk is considering possible coordination with Russian icebreaker company Rosatomflot, which is the company that operates these big icebreakers. I said, as traffic increase, yeah, now here's something from Arctic Today, that article, 'Nuclear icebreaker escorts on the Northern Sea Route went up 54 percent in 2019. Things are getting busier. The Northern Sea Route, increasingly looking like a viable passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific or the other way round. Now, will ever become really competitive with, say, the Suez Canal or to a lesser extent with the Panama Canal. Likely not but we shall see. It's just another example of how interesting things are continuing to unfold in the Arctic. Thank you.
