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The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (Helsinki Commission),
or briefly HELCOM, agreed at its Extraordinary Ministerial Meeting in Copenhagen,
Denmark, on 10 December 2001, to take measures to improve the safety of navigation
in the Baltic Sea. In the
DECLARATION ON THE SAFETY OF NAVIGATION
AND EMERGENCY CAPACITY IN THE BALTIC SEA AREA
it has been agreed, inter alia, to carry out a systematic re-survey of the
main shipping routes and of the approaches to the main ports (HELCOM Copenhagen
Declaration) in order to ensure that the safety of navigation is not endangered
by inadequate source information.
A working group of the Baltic Sea Hydrographic Commission (BSHC), which is
part of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), then developed a
scheme for a complete, harmonised re-survey of all main shipping routes in the
Baltic Sea on the basis of IHO’s Special Publication 44 (S 44). Since 2003,
the surveys have been carried out as agreed.
The routes are re-surveyed in accordance with Order 1 of S44. That means,
inter alia, nearly complete coverage of the area with the requirement to detect
cubic features of 2x2x2 metres or bigger. To achieve that goal, the BSH uses
primarily state-of-the art side scan sonar systems parallel to the survey. Up
to now, hundreds of objects have already been found, some of which have been
classified as underwater obstructions and investigated in more detail. The surveys
are co-ordinated closely with the neighbouring states. On the webpage
http://helcomresurvey.sjofartsverket.se/HELCOMRESURVEYSITE
information about the current status of survey activities in the entire Baltic
region is available.
For additional information about the surveys conducted by Germany under the
HELCOM scheme, please click on
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