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NUNAVUT - Five coast guard icebreakers spend time patrolling the Arctic over the open water season and are a constant presence in the seas.

Michel Boudreau, captain of the Radisson, said icebreakers are the first big ships that enter the region - this year, on June 26 - and the last ones to leave it, when the ice thickens in mid-November.

For now, and the near future, the coast guard believes it has the resources to address the needs of the North.

"This year's traffic is up quite a bit," said Garry Linsey, central and Arctic regional director of maritime services aboard the Radisson in late August. He said there were about 28 vessels in Arctic waters on any given day.

The coast guard keeps track of vessels in the region, provides escorts to ships and is a presence in the North should it be needed in a search and rescue operation.

Linsey said the coast guard is capable of handling up to four times the traffic in the Arctic today, with the fleet it operates.

Larry Trigatti, superintendent of environmental response for the coast guard's central and Arctic region, said while traffic is increasing, it would be foolish for the coast guard to begin moving too many resources around before shipping routes are set in stone.

He said before traffic increases, infrastructure has to be put in place to ensure the safety of vessels traversing the shipping ways.

Items like navigational markers have to be set up, along with the shoring up of radio communications to make sure there are no gaps in contact between ships on the seas.

"That has to all be in there before we say, 'OK, we need another reallocation,'" said Trigatti. "I'd like to think we are staying a step ahead. Maybe not three, which is where we are being pushed sometimes."

As part of Operation Nanook - a Canadian sovereignty exercise held in the southern Baffin region at the end of August - a coast guard ship, the Radisson, took the lead on responding to a simulated hazardous waste spill.

Trigatti said the coast guard is prepared for spills of various sizes.

Nine communities in Nunavut are equipped with community response packs designed to respond to isolated spills resulting from fuel transfers off ships to communities, he said. These are the most common spills in the North, said Trigatti.

Communities with response packs are Kugluktuk, Coral Harbour, Gjoa Haven, Arctic Bay, Cambridge Bay, Cape Dorset, Clyde River, Resolute and Rankin Inlet. They are operable by volunteers in the communities.

There are three sites in the North - Iqaluit, Churchill, Man., and Tuktoyaktuk, NWT - which have the resources to deal with a 1,000-tonne spill. The equipment at these stations can be transported, along with 40 to 50 personnel, by barge to the area of incident.

Currently, ships are not legally required to report to the Canadian Coast Guard when entering Arctic waters.

Usually ships voluntarily report, Linsey said, because it is in their and their passengers' best interest to have the coast guard know their position.

Last year, however, two cruise ships did not report their intentions to the coast guard, making their locations known only sporadically.

While there have been calls for the reporting to be made mandatory, Linsey pointed out that this was federally regulated by Transport Canada and was, therefore, not the coast guard's call.

Trigatti said safe and transparent reporting benefits everyone.

"It's not productive for a commercial entity to go high-risk," he said. "They aren't going to want to put their cargo at risk."

"Everyone shares from a safe transportation system."