Tsunami update

But the major damages may yet come. The force of the tsunami caused all manner of geographic dislocation, not least below the surface of the seas. Silting may be a problem to be faced in some ports and passages, and reports are coming in of quite large disturbances to that roadway between the world’s trading regions called the Malacca Straits.

The channel between Sumatra, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula that connects the Andaman Sea with the South China Sea is traditionally thought to be one of the most active shipping lanes on the planet. It is estimated that around US$ 1 trillion in cargo and services passes through it each year. But water depths in sections of the Straits have shifted dramatically in the wake of the Asian tsunami. Sections that were once more than 1,000 feet deep are now as shallow as 100 feet, slowing shipping as routes are re-charted and changed. Thousands of buoys that served as navigational aids are no longer there and old shipwrecks shifted to be also joined by new wrecks.

All this means that new charts will be necessary, still a slow painstaking process even with all the black magic of GPS available to modern chart makers. Slower steaming equals higher costs to be passed down the line and perhaps even a notch more congestion in the ports, as reconstruction cargoes join the booming shipping volumes of the Western Pacific. And slower steaming is just what the pirates of the Straits dreamed of.

And who is responsible for the maintenance of channels, fairway navigation and right depths of water in ports? Why the ports themselves of course. Is that the safe berth bar* I can spy, working stolidly, resisting the temptation to speculate with unbecoming enthusiasm on how many cases there will be in 2005 based on ships grounding on murky bottoms?

* attorneys specializing in ‘safe berth’ charterparty disputes