A court decision and its consequences

FS „POLARSTERN“ ARK-XXV/3

Reykjavik – Bremerhaven

Weekly report  No. 2

09.08. to 15.08.2010

The 2nd week of our research cruise was influenced by a decision of the regional Nunavut Court of Justice. The court issued an Interlocutory Order restraining Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) from proceeding to conduct seismic testing within its project ECASE. This project of our cooperation partner relies on a part of the seismic data, which were planned in Nunavut Territory during our research cruise from aboard RV Polarstern. 

All necessary research permissions had been granted for these measurements. In the context of the usual application procedure, Canadian authorities including the regional Nunavut authorities also carried out an environmental impact assessment. Therefore, we were surprised by the Interlocutory Order, which prevents us from completing our research project as planned. The court decision against the ECASE project has created a complicated legal situation, which will not be resolved quickly. Consequently, we have to focus only on the Greenland part of Baffin Bay for our marine seismic research activities. All necessary applications for research in this region were submitted well in advance and approved by the Greenland authorities.

We are very sorry and frustrated not to be able continue our scientific operations as per schedule, despite the fact that our project was peer reviewed and declared as scientifically important and funded with significant amount of German taxpayer money. Moreover, scientific and logistic preparation of the project took 6 years.  About half of our comprehensive programme was planned for Canadian waters. The current situation demands a re-organization of our research programme, so that the work will contribute as much as possible to answering our scientific questions, even though we are limited to one part of the original survey area. We started intensive scientific discussions on board, and an alternative / supplementary science plan is in preparation.