Published on: 16.9.2021
Information produced by Finnish Environment Institute
Many types of shipping and boating
In a busy port, small boats zip around enormous passenger ships and cargo vessels like mice dodging a herd of elephants. Many types of ships and boats are used for a wide range of purposes.
The large number of different watercraft reflects the importance of waterborne transport. For centuries, the sea and inland waterways have offered a convenient way of travelling or transporting goods. Using boats and ships – or travelling across the ice in winter – was much easier than crossing hilly and rocky terrain.
While overland transport has increased in importance since those days, it still cannot compete with waterborne traffic, especially over long distances. On average, a few thousand watercraft are sailing on the Baltic Sea at all times. This figure includes those fitted with automatic identification system (AIS) transceivers, in addition to which thousands of smaller boats are also out at sea.
As for inland waters, Lake Saimaa is one of the few still used for transporting goods. While the numbers of fishing boats have also gone down, pleasure boating now accounts for most of the waterborne traffic both on lakes and along the coast.
Waterborne traffic is served by a network of waterways and ports, with over 20,000 kilometres of waterways marked on the map. One fifth of these are commercial shipping lanes. Waterways sometimes need to be maintained by dredging, not only because of land uplift and silting but as a result of the increasing size of vessels.
In times gone by, timber floating channels were also maintained: they extended to over 40,000 kilometres in their heyday. Many rivers and even small streams were cleared for timber floating, as this was almost the only way of transporting logs from the forest to a sawmill or pulp mill. In recent times, some of the cleared river sections have been restored to a more natural state.
Image: © Jari Kurvinen, Vastavalo
Read more:
On external sites: Depth data and fairway information (in Finnish; the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency)