Maritime Law in Focus as Protecting Subsea Infrastructure Comes to the Fore

Centuries-old international maritime law has to be updated to outlaw damage to undersea infrastructure such as cables and pipelines, the Estonian justice minister told Reuters after cables connecting it to Finland were again damaged this week.

Finnish authorities on Thursday seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines.

On Friday, the Estonian navy moved to protect a parallel power line.

The Estonian government has decided to apply to the International Maritime Organization by February to update the maritime law, which it says currently does not deal with underwater damage.

“We are interested in pushing the international maritime community to change or to modernize the international maritime law”, Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta said in an interview. She said that bringing clarity to the legislation on how countries are to deal with cases of underwater damage would "minimize" the possibility of any disputes ending up in an international court.

“The current maritime law, parts of which are centuries old, deals quite specifically with piracy, quite specifically with unauthorized broadcasting, which are above the sea level issues... (but) dragging the anchor in order to harm the undersea infrastructure is something that is not specifically covered”, said Pakosta.

For example, in the case of piracy, the current United Nations maritime convention grants the affected countries the right to seize ships or aircraft and arrest people involved in it and for their national courts to decide about penalties.

Estonian investigators said earlier China would not respond to their request to investigate a Hong Kong-flagged vessel Newnew Polar Bear, which it and Finland suspects of damaging a natural gas pipeline and telecommunications cables linking the two countries in October 2023.

Sweden said that China did not allow Swedish authorities to board a Chinese-flagged vessel Yi Peng 3, suspected in damaging two Baltic undersea cables. China said it had provided all documents for the investigation.

(Reuters)