ABSTRACT
This chapter examines in detail the risks emerging in Polar navigation today, which have proved to have such an impact on marine operations that the Polar Code was drafted to apply across a raft of maritime Conventions, indeed the IMO (International Maritime Organization) gave it the force of mandatory law when it adopted SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea) Chapter XIV under the title Safety measures for ships operating in Polar waters. The application of UNCLOS to the High Arctic paints the background against which the chapter must be drawn, and the greatest risk to the Master, of criminalisation for environmental damage. The environmental issues and the commercial issues in this region are immensely complex and, inevitably, come into conflict, in dramatic contrast to the Antarctic, which has a treaty all to itself. From this point, the professional hazards of Polar navigation are discussed, and demonstrate how the Master must accept that, in effect, they are the ones who underwrite the risk, illustrated by the case of Captain Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez. No discussion of Polar risks can ignore the influence of Russia in the High Arctic, which is leading the field in Polar navigation and, at the same time, must deal with casualty management according to the law – and inevitably its geopolitical priorities. It is, after all, the risk of environmental disaster that consumes the normative ethics of the people in the Coastal State – but they are the ones who, ultimately, drive the laws which criminalise the Master.
