The impact of the Polar Code on risk mitigation in Arctic waters: a “toolbox” for underwriters?

The existing risk weighing on vessel, crew and ecosystem in the Arctic and more globally in Polar waters promoted the adoption of the Polar Code (PC) early 2017, a mandatory international legal framework intended for enhanced safety and environmental protection. While the substance of the PC has been extensively analyzed, few studies have focused on the underlying relationships between the PC and underwriters. Based on an extensive literature review, documentary materials and interviews with insurance companies, this article conceptualizes the PC as a “toolbox” and analyzes how underwriters can exploit it in their work within the emerging Arctic market. The PC does not only regulate the navigation in Arctic waters in legal terms, but is also aimed at mitigating risks in the Polar areas through the identification of hazard sources and proceduralization of risk assessment. As a result we observe a certain “Polar Code paradox”. Even though the PC is a risk-based instrument and constitutes a key step for improving ship insurability, it has only limited capacity to assist underwriters in assessing risks and insuring vessels. Marine insurers still face a lack of data and high pending uncertainties leading them to exercise extreme caution with Arctic risks appraisal.     

The small-sized benthic biota of the Håkon Mosby Mud Volcano (SW Barents Sea slope)

R/V POLARSTERN expedition ARK XVIII/1 in summer 2002 provided the opportunity to carry out a sampling programme to assess the activity, biomass and composition of the small-sized benthic biota (size range: bacteria to meiofauna) around the active mud-oozing and methane-seeping Håkon Mosby Mud Volcano (HMMV) on the SW Barents Sea slope, Northern North-Atlantic. A total of 11 stations, covering different areas (e.g., bacterial mat sites, and pogonophoran fields) within the crater, and sites outside the caldera were sampled using a multiple corer. Subsamples were analyzed for various biogenic compounds to estimate the flux of organic matter to the seafloor (sediment-bound chloroplastic pigments indicating phytodetritus), activities (bacterial exo-enzymatic turnover rates) and the total biomass [from bulk parameters, like phospholipid (PL) concentrations in the sediments] of the smallest sediment-inhabiting organisms (range: bacteria to meiofauna). Direct investigations of bacterial numbers and biomasses as well as on meiofauna densities and composition completed our investigations at HMMV. As expected for a comparable small deep-sea area with only minor disparity in water depth between sampling sites, our investigations revealed generally no significant differences in organic matter input from phytodetritus sedimentation between sampling sites inside and outside HMMV. Bacterial exo-enzymatic activities as well as total microbial biomass (TMB) and meiofauna densities, however, exhibited generally higher values at HMMV, compared to sites outside the mud volcano. Enhanced benthic life at HMMV is based on chemosynthetic processes, making the mud volcano a “chemosynthetic oasis” in an otherwise oligotrophic deep-sea environment. As we did not find any indication for bacterial symbioses in the meiofauna, comparably rich meiofaunal assemblages at HMMV are presumably indirectly related to a general enhanced biological production.