A future technology of environmental management of semi-enclosed seas

We give an overview of the principles of and recent developments in the new technique that employs the potential for a systematic decrease in the environmental risk to the nearshore by means of optimization of the offshore locations of the release of adverse impacts. The gain may be an increase in the time until an adverse impact (for example, an oil spill) reaches a nearshore or a corresponding decrease in the probability of the impacting such an area. The “ability” of different offshore domains to provide risk of coastal pollution in terms of current-induced drift of pollution is quantified based on the analysis of a large pool of numerically simulated Lagrangian trajectories of water particles in the surface layer of the sea. Environmental gain is achieved by placing the dangerous activities into sea areas (or redirecting ship traffic accordingly), from which the transport of the adverse impact to the nearshore is less likely or takes the most time. We provide several examples of implementation of this technique and estimates of the resulting gain from the use of the corresponding optimal fairways for the Gulf of Finland and for the south-western the Baltic Sea.