Scientists, journalists, and others have written extensively about shipping and transit along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) for the past twenty years.
Many experts believed there would be an explosion in transit shipping along the NSR, with ships going through from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as the Arctic route is shorter.
“What is taking place, contrary to those expectations, is that Arctic traffic is indeed increasing. But it is not transit traffic. It is destination traffic”, says Arctic shipping expert, Frédéric Lasserre, Professor at the Department of Geography at Laval University in Quebec City.
“Traffic consists of ships going to the Arctic to perform an economic task. Whether it is fishing, tourism, or ships linked to natural resource extraction. As far as transit traffic is concerned, it is not taking off”, Lasserre continues.
Much of the so-called transit shipping along the route is traffic fuelled by ships going to or leaving Murmansk. Real transit from Europe to Asia is very limited.
