1 Abstract

The Canary Islands being around two thousand kilometers from the Spain mainland, has certain corresponding peculiarities of an archipelago for its socio-economic development. Its remoteness and fragmented territory make them highly dependent of maritime transport, since their commerce and movement of people happens mainly by sea. In this context, the disruption of inter-island shipping lines due to different reasons, in particular severe meteoceanic conditions, leads to negative socio-economic implications. The present study focuses on the identification of adverse oceanographic and meteorological conditions inducing disruptions along inter-island maritime traffic routes for transporting passengers and cargo in Las Palmas province. The results indicate that every maritime route can be affected by disruptive stormy events, mainly depending on the directionality of these episodes, which have a marked seasonality, and the characteristics of the vessel covering a specific route. These bad weather conditions cause the disruption of maritime regular lines and with it the loss of hundreds of euros every hour of delay, detour, or disruption of a maritime route only by the tourism consumption side.

Keywords: inter-island maritime traffic disruption, meteoceanic conditions, economic assessment, regular lines.