MARITIME TECHNOLOGY

Maritime Technology



Maritime Technology

Introduction

Astrait has never been legally defined in an international convention or instrument. The ordinary meaning of strait in geographic terms is “a natural passage or arm of water connecting two larger bodies of water” (Roberts, 2006, p. 98). On the other hand, the legal definition of straits based on the legal concept of the territorial sea is “any passage whose minimum breadth is equal to or less than, the combined territorial sea claim of the bordering State or States”.

The Straits of Malacca and Singapore are narrow waterways that connect the Indian Ocean to the West and the Pacific Ocean to the East. The entrance to the straits is located between Ujung Baka (5° 40'N, 95° 26'E), the northernmost tip of Sumatra, to Lem Voalan (7° 45'N, 98° 18'E) in Phuket Island in Thailand (Besseris, 2009, 583).

The Strait of Malacca is quite wide at its opening to the Andaman Sea, which is about 200 nautical miles in breadth (Emran, 2007). The Strait of Malacca separates mainland Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, forming a funnel-shaped waterway as it narrows to the south. It has many tributary waterways along its length, namely the Strait of Bengkali, Strait of Rupat, and Strait of Johor.

As it goes south, it ends in areas between Malaysia's Tanjung Piai (1° 11.5'N, 103° 21'E) and Indonesia's Pulau Karimun Kecil (1° 10'N, 103° 23.5'E) and subsequently joins the Strait of Singapore, which is located between the island Republic of Singapore, the south coast of Eastern Johor, and the islands of Riau in Indonesia.

The Impacts of Shipping on the Marine Environment

Oil spills and discharge of waste are typical of modern shipping activities, either through operational or accidental discharges. With the high volume of shipping movements in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, there is always a high risk of the occurrence of maritime casualties involving accidental spills of oil in the waters of the straits. Oil spill incidents entail adverse impacts on the marine environment.

They may deteriorate the well-being of sea and coastal wildlife through destruction of coastal and marine ecosystems. An oil slick has devastating effects on everything that it touches, whether further out to sea or in the coastal areas. This was illustrated by the 1997 MT Evoikos and MT Orapin Global collision in the Strait of Singapore (“Malaysia's Response to the Evoikos Incident,” 1998). The collision caused an oil spill that later formed a slick flowing from the collision site toward the Malaysian side of the Strait of Malacca. As a result, the whole west coast of Peninsular Malaysia from Johor to Selangor was exposed to the pollution threat. This oil slick posed hazards not only to the marine environment but also to the mangrove swamps and jungles, fish and prawn farms in coastal areas, and the beach resorts along the southwestern coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Moreover, the costs for cleaning up are not cheap either. The Diego Silang 1976 oil spill cleanup cost US$1,086,421 (Chou, ...