Shipping related activities and their environmental impact – lessons learnt from the Estonian case study

Baltic Sea maritime transport makes up about 15% of all cargo globally transported via sea, which makes it one of the busiest maritime areas all over the world [1]. At the same time shipping operations create environmental pressures to the air, discharges of oil, sewage from passenger ships as well as invasion of alien organisms from ships’ ballast water or hulls [2]. In order to move from assessment of discharges from one ship to a certain area, it is necessary to combine the discharge factors to the activity patterns [3]. In this study the shipping activities that have environmental impact in the Estonian sea area will be analysed. In addition, the activities will be related with their source of pollution (e.g., manoeuvring, anchoring, loading/unloading cargo) and the impact or consequences are analysed (e.g., emission to air (CO2, SOx, NOx) discharge to water (antifouling paints, scrubber water, ballast water, bilge water, black water), physical discharge (underwater noise) etc). Finally, we assess the relative importance of the environmental effect of shipping in Estonian waters.