Good health to everyone!
I already wrote on the site that in August of this year one of my friends went on an expedition to the Arctic. The purpose of the expedition was paleontology, ornithology - species registration, geomorphology, ecology and monitoring, zoology of marine mammals, behavioral ecology of the polar bear and arctic fox, study of permafrost, study of paleosteppe, there were 40 scientists, as well as “Return the Russian presence in the Arctic, including military , - as Konstantin Zaitsev, expedition leader and assistant to polar explorer Chilingarov, said. Some islands haven't been there for 30 years.
And in December, a new issue of the magazine “Around the World” was published, where one of the expedition participants describes the expedition and the life of meteorologists. 
Poachers come here, exposing themselves to danger, in search of mammoth tusks. And scientists collect invaluable data here. But it will all end soon: the New Siberian Islands are rapidly sinking under water
On the last day of August on Kotelny Island snowing. You won't get far without a down jacket. But it’s light here all day long, so you have to cover the windows with blankets at night. At the height of summer the sun is only half-rising, but now it barely rises at dawn, rolling along the horizon and briefly falling behind it at midnight.
The Polaris ship lands us on the southern coast of Kotelny Island, where the Sannikov weather station is located. Here live the boss Sasha and his wife Sveta, the meteorological technician Sanya Jr., the cat Vaska, the white dog Bely, the black dog Cherny, red dog Puck and the dog Sarah, who seems to have had wolves in her family. Sasha and Sveta met at the Novosibirsk Meteorological School, arrived at the station in the north of the island, and then transferred here. “According to the staff, there should be more of us, and we are supposed to work every other day, but we are on duty every other day. Even better: work for a day, sleep for a day, and work again,” says Sasha. “If there was a second day off, it’s not clear what to do with yourself.” Boredom is generally more difficult to bear than climate.
Sasha says that when he lived in the north of the island, other meteorologists were all trying to hunt bears. As soon as they see one in the distance, they run for the gun. And Sasha grabbed a stick and knocked on the fuel barrels that were everywhere there to scare away the beast. Bears come out to people all the time, looking for food. And people shoot without thinking twice. “I tell them, if the bear wants, he’ll tear your head off, you won’t have time to raise your gun. But he is not an aggressive animal, not even a cautious one. How many times has it happened: you go to take readings in winter - there is no one, there is even snow, then five minutes later you leave the house - you see your tracks, and next to them are bear tracks. That is, he saw you, waited until you left, and went about his business.”
True, bears appear on the island less and less often. The wolves have also disappeared since the deer disappeared. And the border guards killed the deer - for fun they shot entire herds from helicopters. Now deer are found only in the depths of the island - one or two at a time, and even then rarely. Mice and arctic foxes remained. Sasha constantly saves arctic foxes from dogs, and recently he pulled a polar owl out of Bely’s mouth. It is unclear how Bely grabbed it; owls usually do not allow anyone to get within 20 meters of them.
In his free time, Sasha collects mammoth tusks, and this is much more profitable than his main job. She and Sveta have been here for five years and are about to quit - they earned as much as they wanted, it’s time to go home to Altai region, open your own business and have children. Because having children here would be crazy: no school, no hospital, not even a paramedic within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. If something happens, you need to call the air ambulance, which God knows when it will arrive. The former station manager had a stroke, and they came for him only a few days later.
I understand the meaning of the definition “hard to reach station” when I try to send a letter. Sannikova station was founded in 1942, and in terms of everyday life and technology, little has changed since then. No mail, satellite phone - as a last resort, Email- through the Tiksi branch of Roshydromet, where it is read and censored at its own discretion. It's not that it's their job - it's more of a hobby. Sveta sends my letter to a colleague in Tiksi and asks him to forward it to the specified address. A few minutes later the answer comes: “The letter has been cancelled. Don’t ask questions.” Once a year, the Roshydromet ship “Mikhail Somov” comes to the island, bringing a supply of food for the entire next year, paper mail and new employees. This summer, border guards arrived four times. There is no longer any official communication with the earth. And unofficially, by spring, Yakuts and other tusk seekers appear. And although tracked vehicles are strictly prohibited on all islands - a protected area - prospectors come on all-terrain vehicles on the ice and later, in the spring, on boats, despite the mortal danger. 
When Sasha and Sveta came here in 2010, they were given a ride on an all-terrain vehicle. The ice on the sea is not at all smooth; there are hummocks all around as high as a five-story building. Even more dangerous than a hole in the ice: you never know whether it is a puddle or a crack all the way to the water. All-terrain vehicles lean out of the cab with binoculars - looking out for the path. Sometimes there is nothing left to do but try to jump over the faults at full speed. “The driver knocked on our back, saying, whoever is sleeping, wake up and hold on tight, we’ll jump,” recalls Sasha. “I accelerated all the way, jumped over a hole in the ice with a clang, but didn’t make it, and the back part got stuck in the water. I opened the door, thinking that now the second all-terrain vehicle would pull us out on a cable, and the water rushed inside. Brigade chief Gena is standing on the edge of the ice floe, yelling: get out! His head was bleeding - he and the driver in the cab were shaken so much that he broke through the hatch in the ceiling with his head. We barely had time to jump outside in just our socks, half asleep. All things, computers, everything that was inside, sank. Fortunately, two more all-terrain vehicles were with us, we got into them, borrowed shoes, and got to the station alive.”
Traveling by water is no less dangerous: poachers usually sail in flat-bottomed aluminum boats. The nearest coast is 400 kilometers from here. In the fall, during a storm, the waves are two meters high, so you have to jump from wave to wave at full speed. They say that last year one person flew overboard, but the boat did not even stop, because if the engine was turned off, the next wave would cover and everyone would drown. Only an organized team of poachers from the village of Kazachye arrives on sea rubber boats of the Zodiac type, which are more reliable and much more expensive.
The weather station is the only center of civilization here, and poachers and border guards, having reached the island, first of all go to the guys. Meteorologists maintain Swiss neutrality and accept both. Sometimes scientists also come. And now we - four geomorphologists, photographer Max and me - were dropped on Kotelny for a week during the expedition of the Russian Geographical Society to the New Siberian Islands. 
There are eight meteorological periods in a day. Some days they are tracked at Kotelny by the station chief Sasha and his wife Sveta (left), others by Sanya Jr. (right)
Tiksi
Our expedition began six days earlier, when we arrived in Tiksi, the closest city to the islands on the mainland. As often happens with half-abandoned northern cities, Tiksi seems frozen into the past. "Glory to October!" - reads the inscription, lined with rusty fuel barrels on the hillside above the city. The Tiksi port is still operating, but it looks like its own ghost: there are rusty taps near the water, peeling barges and skeletons of ships in the water, the coast is littered with mountains of scrap metal, and the port is surrounded by wooden two-story buildings that have rotted into dust. 
Thirty years ago Tiksi was thriving: a coal mine, a port - everything was being built and required work force, in the dorm there were five people crammed into a room designed for two, and crazy people got money. “In the eighties, five hundred rubles was considered an ordinary, small salary,” says our accompanying Valera, “people had ten, fifteen thousand on their books. Well, of course, then it all burned down.” IN better times 15,000 people lived in Tiksi, today three times less. There is no mining, no production. Even the only grocery store was closed all morning - the saleswoman simply did not come. We are going to have lunch in the city center, at the only restaurant here that is open only by reservation. After dinner, they say, it’s better not to linger here: there’s a bar next door - no dancing, but with a guaranteed fight.
Over lunch I ask the expedition leadership what our main goal is. “Task number one is to run through all the points as quickly as possible and understand where and how to work in the future,” says Alexander Bulygin, scientific director of the enterprise. - We do not discuss the political component, I am not competent, but it was voiced by Putin. It is necessary to prove that the shelf is an extension, a further extension of our great homeland, and, accordingly, we have priority rights to develop mineral resources.”
“Return the Russian presence to the Arctic, including the military one,” says Konstantin Zaitsev, expedition leader and assistant to polar explorer Chilingarov. - And scientific. The Russian presence in the Arctic declined significantly in the 1990s. We also want to create here national park, which would be better protected than the existing reserve. “I would like to create a recreational area for scientific work and tourism, so that there is no uncontrolled use of resources.”
The thesis about the return of the military presence is somewhat contrary to reality: before our eyes, the military unit in Tiksi-3, in October it was completely disbanded, and the city airport, owned by the Ministry of Defense, was closed.
After lunch we go to the Tiksi weather station. We are in time for the launch of the “ball”, that is, the weather balloon. A white ball one and a half meters in diameter with attached sensors rises 38 kilometers above the ground and bursts there. In two hours of flight, the sensors manage to report everything about wind speed and direction, temperature and other atmospheric parameters. This information is expensive: there is an air corridor over Tiksi, through which fifteen flights connecting Europe and Asia pass every day, so all major air carriers buy accurate weather reports.
“Now there are those who have nowhere to go or who are working towards their northern pension,” says meteorologist Olga Viktorovna. - It’s not a woman’s job; in winter you have to manually drill two and a half meters into the ice to measure the thickness. Every three hours per day, you need to take readings and send a report. Water temperature, wave height, precipitation. In winter there is such a snowstorm that you can’t see your feet. But I’m probably an abnormal woman, sometimes you leave the site in April: the frost has gone away, the warblers have arrived, the sun is shining, the snow is sparkling. And you think: what happiness this is! Although the better the weather, the more work the meteorologist has.” Later I find out that Olga Viktorovna is the terror of all surrounding meteorologists, and the Tiksi station is exemplary.
Already at dusk we return to the hotel in a car with local businessman Stepan Sukach. During the expedition, he is responsible for logistics and support. I ask what he is doing here. “Actually, I’m working on mammoth. From mid-July to September, thirty people collect tusks and bones from me, then they buy it all from me, ninety percent Chinese, ten percent Russian artists. It's actually full of minerals. Previously, coal was mined. There are both diamonds and gold. Every year we submit applications for development, but they still refuse. The city lives on subsidies, although anything could happen here. I like it here. I'm a hunter and fisherman, you know? And in winter the heating can be turned off at minus 50, so in my apartment there is a stove in each room and a generator that is enough for the whole house. You can't take me with your bare hands. But in general, I’m moving to Moscow for the winter.” We arrive at the hotel. The inscription at the entrance: “Honor and glory come from work.” 
A disposable weather radiosonde rises 30–40 km above the ground, then the ball bursts and the equipment crashes to the ground. But in the two hours that the probe is in the air, it manages to provide accurate information about the weather in the air corridor connecting Asia and Europe
Boiler room
On Kotelny Island, geomorphologists from Moscow State University, Nadya, Natasha, Denis and Sasha, who sailed with me on the Polaris, and I climb into an all-terrain vehicle every morning and set off along the coast to the thermal circus - a place where ancient ice melts. The New Siberian Islands are rapidly eroding - the coastline in some places is receding by 10, and in others by 30 meters per year. This picture of rapid destruction by geological standards is mesmerizing: the high steep bank is sliding, forming something like a clay amphitheater with protruding cones - baijerakhs, as geomorphologists call them. Brown ice rises like a wall above the lunar landscape. Most likely, in the future the islands will completely go under water, but while they stand, scientists have a chance to find out what the climate was like in this area hundreds of thousands of years ago. And that’s exactly what we’re here for - to take samples of ice and soil, so that we can then use their composition to reconstruct the conditions in which the islands were formed.
The brown ice above the thermocircus looks like a glacier sprinkled with earth on top. However, as geomorphologists explain to me, this is not a glacier, but vein ice; it is formed in a completely different way: from small veins of ice in ground cracked by frost. Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, ice veins grow, turning into giant blocks, or edomas, that look like ice cliffs above the seashore. There is no climate for the formation of food anywhere on Earth today.
Having pulled the swamp boots higher, geomorphologists climb into the thermal circus with shovels, picks and axes. Sasha and Denis are rocking different levels pieces of ice and put them into numbered bags. In the evening, they will pour the melted ice into test tubes, which will then be sent to a laboratory in Moscow for isotope analysis. By the ratio of oxygen isotopes in melt water, you can find out what the climate was like when this ice froze (see page 183). Nadya is in the very middle of the thermocircus and, knee-deep in mud, digs up samples of peat at a level below the ice vein. By the composition of peat in the laboratory, you can determine the age of the ice above it, and by the composition of the soil, you can learn more about how it was formed. “Why is all this needed?” - I ask when we drink in the evening to a successful start field work. “For the same reason, why any paleo-reconstructions,” explains Natasha. - Without knowledge of the past it is impossible to predict the future. In nature, everything is cyclical, including climate. To know what will happen after, you need to imagine what happened before.”
The most useful resource
“Once on an expedition we found a mammoth leg with bones and meat in the permafrost. She lay in the ground for ten thousand years. We threw a piece into the frying pan - we thought we would eat mammoth meat - but the meat turned into a brown, stinking liquid on the fire. Time destroyed the fabrics, so that they only seemed preserved in the ice.” I remember this story told by photographer Sergei Zhdanov in Tiksi, when we were walking through the tundra with Sasha in search of a tusk. The New Siberian Islands are composed of soft sediments from the Quaternary period, which began 2.6 million years ago and continues to this day. Now all this is thawing, eroding and collapsing into the sea. Tusks and skeletons of mammoths, Pleistocene horses and lions are constantly exposed. But in last years They are collected quite quickly by poachers.
Over there, do you see the orange flag? This is the place where the former station master died.
Sasha says that the head of the weather station the year before, Sergei Kholodkov, actually drank a little, like everyone else. But somehow an icebreaker arrived, and Kholodkov exchanged a lot of fish for a lot of alcohol. “Something switched in his head, he started and couldn’t stop. At first he drank at home, then he quarreled with his wife, took a gun, canned food, alcohol and went into the tundra. In October. He was shooting at cans with a gun, warming himself by the fire, probably hunting. It was already severely frosty. His wife called the Ministry of Emergency Situations, they searched the island, but there was snow all around. His remains, heavily devoured by arctic foxes, were found just two kilometers from the station by his cousin, who arrived in the spring.” Over the course of the whole day, Sasha finds one small fragment of a tusk, about twenty kilograms. He jokes: “My monthly salary is lying around.” The season is nearing the end, so the tusk in easily accessible places has already been collected. Previously, there was much more of it, but there were fewer people willing. And they controlled less. Our all-terrain vehicle Valera and other people of the Tiksi entrepreneur Sukach, who work at Kotelny, say that they collected only three hundred kilograms. This is not much, a whole tusk of an adult mammoth weighs up to a hundredweight, but finding one is a colossal success. The ones that are most valued are those that are whole from base to tip and dark brown or dark cherry color. And really great luck - paired tusks. When a few years ago “one guy” found a collectible pair, events developed like in a James Bond movie: a couple of hours later a helicopter arrived, people in black glasses handed a case with cash to the lucky prospector and took the find. “They say he was paid a million rubles,” says Valera. “But that was five years ago, since then prices even for ordinary tusks have increased fivefold, and even more so for collectible tusks.” There are four quality categories, but on average a kilogram today costs $500. This is the price at which seekers hand over the tusk to their superiors. Then the tusk is sent to the capital, where it is checked by various authorities, registered and resold to special companies that have a license for international trade. 
Meteorologist Sanya, in his free time from work, is mainly busy repairing the Buran. In rare moments between breakdowns, Sanya rides it around the station. Poachers travel across the tundra on the same snowmobiles all summer in search of tusks. At night, border guards bring arrested poachers to the station. Border guards arrived a few days ago along with “legal” mammoth-hunting all-terrain vehicles. All-terrain vehicles - Vladimir and Oleg from St. Petersburg. On the mainland, Vladimir demolishes old houses and digs foundation pits for new ones. In general, it is a profession in demand. But the tusk is more profitable. The Yakuts, he says, are illegal immigrants, but he has permission. The island is both a border zone and a nature reserve. There is a semi-legal form of existence here - with permission. It is formalized at the Federal Agency for Natural Resources Management and at the relevant research institute. What exactly the permit is for is not specified, but it is definitely not for tusk extraction.
You can't dig in the tundra, or even drive heavy equipment. But, of course, both search workers and border guards travel, because otherwise it is impossible to find tusks and illegal immigrants. Also, under no circumstances should you dig into the ground; you can only collect what lies on the surface. But, of course, you won’t collect much this way.
The next morning, border guards make a final raid on the island by helicopter and find three more Yakut diggers. Two groups of poachers - yesterday's and today's - meet at the helicopter cheerfully, like old friends at a party. The colonel, despite the sleepless night, also radiates goodwill and supervises the loading: “Stop the fraternization, we enter the helicopter one at a time. Anyone who craps inside or breaks something will come out over the sea without warning!”
The Yakuts whom the border guards are taking out do not look dejected. All they face is a fine of about 500 rubles for violating the border regime and a couple of thousand if they resisted arrest. Carrying a weapon without the required documents is more serious, but no one will actually be punished for extracting the tusk. “And this is no longer our business, but Rosprirodnadzor’s,” the colonel answers the question about the tusk. - But they don’t do this at all. You can’t just take a tusk out, to seize it officially, you need to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and there’s nowhere to put it.” However, the detainees do not have any tusk with them. It is hidden in the depths of an unmarked island. Only GPS points by which the cache will be found when they come for it in the fall or spring.
“It’s even more profitable for them,” says Valera, as we follow the helicopter with our eyes. - From Tiksi they will get to their villages for thousands for thirty rubles. And from here the boat gets up at one hundred and one hundred and fifty. It seems to me that they finished their work and deliberately came out closer to surrender so that the border guards would take them away. Otherwise, they would be hiding in the tundra, like others are hiding now.” 
The thermocircus, where geomorphologists collected ice samples, may be under water next season: the coastline of the islands in some places is receding by 20–30 meters per year.
Permafrost
A day later we are also taken from the island. During the time we spent at Kotelny, Polaris managed to ascend to the De Long Islands and return back. I ask those remaining on the ship what we missed. “Not so much, we drove more and more from island to island and took pictures with flags,” says Denis Ivanov, a specialist in marine mammals from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Although there was something interesting.” Denis, with sparkling eyes, talks about three gray whales that were encountered for the first time in these latitudes. “And of course, my favorite place now is Vilkitsky Island. On the steep cliff there are bird colonies, a seal rookery, and bears immediately walk higher on the ledge. I would work there for a couple of days. But they didn’t even let us off; they said it was dangerous with bears. Laughter!"
The last stop before Tiksi is Maly Lyakhovsky, from which we pick up another group of scientists. While the expedition's leadership is placing flags with the emblem of the Russian Geographical Society in the frame, Denis finds out from local meteorologists that every year at the end of August or beginning of September a flock of several hundred beluga whales swims past the island. “Now it’s clear where we need to go to really work next year,” he says. - Beluga whales swim from east to west, but no one knows where from or where. So far, according to my observations, the sea here is dead. On the other hand, we explored quite a bit; we landed on the islands for a maximum of two hours, and even then not on all of them. This is nothing, in a good way you need to explore each island for two or three days, and so on for a couple of months.”
At Fadeevsky, biologists from the North-Eastern Federal University took core samples from the bottom of the lakes, so that later in the laboratory they could identify the types of diatoms in the sediments and use them to reconstruct the ancient climate. “We only managed to collect a dozen samples,” says Ruslan Gorodnichev, team leader. - If we had more time or a helicopter, we could have examined the entire island. And there would be no need to destroy the vegetation cover. As it is, I don’t even know when the tracks from all-terrain vehicles will be covered. Some - in thirty to fifty years, some - in a hundred. And some - never, because if you lift the fertile layer, there are silts under it, which are instantly washed away.”
It’s really difficult to find a place on Kotelny where there are no traces of an all-terrain vehicle. But in the early 2000s, the tusk was worth nothing and there were military personnel on the islands, so poachers did not come here. Now the military bases are abandoned, and on each island, from spring to autumn, 100–150 people with their equipment are digging.
We can say that the islands are still going under water, and in what form they will disappear - pristine or plowed - is not so important from the point of view of evolution. Communication with geomorphologists, who operate not even with thousands, but with millions of years, directs thoughts in this direction. Moreover, now tusk and hunting are the only source of income in Yakut villages. And poachers are by no means outright negative heroes in this story. The same Igor, who comes here for the tusk along with his people, thanks to these forays, rebuilt the village of Kazachiy and literally brought it back to life.
There is one inconvenient circumstance: the more all-terrain vehicles and diggers - “agents of abrasion”, as scientists call them - the faster the islands disappear. If we organize a national park here, where instead of all-terrain vehicles, deer and polar bears will walk, and the soil covers will be disturbed only for strictly scientific purposes, then the islands will last for several thousand, or even tens of thousands, of years. During this time, the climate can change as desired, and the erosion of the banks may stop altogether. It is possible that in a broad sense, from the point of view of eternity and geomorphology, all scenarios are equally good. But geomorphology, as you know, is the science of the relief of the earth. It has nothing to do with the life that occurs on this relief.
Expeditions to the Arctic: seasonality of travel, travel routes, reviews of Arctic expeditions.
- Tours for May Worldwide
- Last minute tours Worldwide
The extreme northern region of the Earth, the Arctic is an eternal kingdom of cold, snow and ice. Stretching nearly 27 million kilometers, the Arctic is more than just an inaccessible region. This legendary, glorified and cursed region of the planet is one of the most desirable points in the track record of a tourist who has already been everywhere. Every year the Arctic is visited by no more than several tens of thousands of travelers - volumes comparable to any European city average. But the point is not at all that there is nothing to see here: the high cost of tours to the Arctic is what eliminates the lion's share fans of icy exotics. However, for a wealthy tourist who, in addition, is not afraid of the cold, the Arctic opens up a whole storehouse of unique riches: ridges of glaciers of indescribable beauty, snow-covered valleys stretching beyond the horizon, polar day and night, northern lights... - in a word, wonders that you will not see anywhere else in the world. planet.
Expeditions to the Arctic - simple...
At modern development tourism, when you can even visit Space - if the client’s desire is supported by appropriate finances, travel to the Arctic no longer seems to be the lot of professional researchers and scientists alone. The times of Piri and Amundsen have sunk into the past - and today an expedition to the Arctic requires almost no special physical training.
Destinations for so-called simple expeditions are, first of all, Danish Greenland and Norwegian Spitsbergen, which are very close to civilization. Accommodation, food and entertainment here are practically no different from popular ones resort destinations, only adjusted for winter. It is also worth paying attention to the Russian Arctic reserves - many have developed routes for tourists varying degrees complexity, and in some, independent movement is allowed - by car or boat.
In 2016, the legendary Arctic icebreaker “Captain Khlebnikov” returns to the market, which in 75 days plans to visit, it seems, all the remarkable corners of the beautiful Arctic.
The 100-kilometer ski trek to the North Pole from the Russian drifting base of Barneo takes about 5-7 days.
...and complex
For “advanced” travelers who have climbed in the highlands, rafted stormy rivers or multi-kilometer walks, relatively complex expeditions to the Arctic are intended. They can be either group or individual. The routes are very diverse: from trekking across open spaces national parks Arctic regions in Russia, Norway, Canada, USA and Denmark before ski expeditions in the footsteps of the discoverers. Among the latter, for example, is a 100-kilometer ski crossing to the North Pole from the Russian drifting base of Barneo, which takes about 5-7 days. Well, for those in whose veins the blood of brave pioneers flows, we can recommend joining professional expeditions to the Arctic, for example, conducted by the Shparo group.
In the Arctic
When to go
Despite the rather mild climate of the Arctic - the annual temperature in most places visited by travelers ranges from +10 °C to -15 °C - for a “difficult” visit to this region, it makes sense to choose the spring-summer period. In autumn and winter, not only is the polar night reigning here, when the sun does not rise above the horizon at all, but strong piercing winds are also very frequent, “lowering” the temperature by at least a dozen degrees, it feels like.
At the same time, “civilized” expeditions - for example, to Greenland or Spitsbergen - are carried out almost throughout the year. In winter, Longyearbyen offers travelers no less a range of active activities than in summer - in addition to snowmobile safaris, dog sledding expeditions and snowmobile excursions - here you can enjoy the northern lights almost every day, because it is six months of night outside.
This is an innovative project of NArFU, Roshydromet and the Russian Geographical Society. It was created to study the nature of the Arctic, and train scientific and production personnel for the region . Expeditions are carried out on the research vessel of the first ice class “Professor Molchanov”. On board there is everything necessary for the scientific activities of the crew: three laboratories, premises adapted for holding lectures and seminars, equipment for carrying out meteorological and oceanographic measurements. In our country, there is an analogue of such a floating university only in Vladivostok.
Every year, a research ship departs from the port of Arkhangelsk on expeditions to the territories of the White, Barents and Kara Seas. 375 students visited the ship “Professor Molchanov” during the five years of the project’s existence, 35 of them foreign students. APU unites more than 20 leading scientific and educational institutions in Russia, Europe and America.
WHY ARE EXPEDITIONS TO THE ARCTIC NEEDED?
What associations arise with the Arctic? Cold, modest nature, and winter all year round. It would seem, why send an entire scientific expedition there if there is nothing there except snow and ice? In fact, the flora and fauna of the Arctic zones is not as scarce as it might seem at first glance. Yes, summer here lasts only forty days, but what a wonderful world the Arctic manages to show in such a a short time. There are many unknown plant species in these territories, so the herbarium collections expand with each expedition. It's worth looking at to confirm this. educational film media center NArFU “Arctic Bridge” “Natural zones of the Arctic” » .
Representatives of a wide variety of specialties can get on board the APU. Science students explore diversity biological species Arctic zones, technical - the mechanism of operation of the vessel "Professor Molchanov", meteorological research is carried out, and humanities students will be interested in studying the historical and cultural heritage archipelagos Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Spitsbergen, Vaygach and Kolguev islands.
Thanks to the activities of the Arctic Floating University, new knowledge about the state of environment Arctic region, and also develop recommendations for the conservation of the Arctic ecosystem. Not every university can boast of such scientific activity, this proves the uniqueness and scientific value project.
HOW TO BECOME A PARTICIPANT OF THE EXPEDITION?
The participants of the expedition are students and research fellows who want to influence the preservation of the identity of the Arctic environment and ensure the sustainable development of the region for future generations. They conduct research in the fields of botany, oceanology, meteorology, hydrochemistry, psychology, history, and archaeology.
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1st year postgraduate student in the field of study “Biological Sciences”:
“I was on the expedition four times. In 2012, my supervisor offered to participate, and I agreed. Previously, she was involved in social activities, and after participating in expeditions she became seriously interested in science. For me, science is entertaining books, communicating with interesting people, discovering something new. It gives you the opportunity to show yourself. The expeditions of the “Arctic Floating University” are a continuation of my scientific activities, as I am studying the soils of the Arctic. These territories have not been explored for a long time, and currently special attention is being paid to the Arctic zones.”
The expedition lasts on average about thirty days. You need to be prepared for a harsh climate, possible storms, and the fact that there will be no stable connection, let alone the Internet. But there will be company interesting people, united by a burning interest in studying the Arctic world. You really need to love your direction in science and be passionate about it. Becoming a member of the APU is an opportunity to gain invaluable experience, a chance to contribute to the development of the Arctic. It doesn't happen to everyone.
Criteria that reserve fund participants must meet:
- 2–4 year student, master’s student or graduate student;
- compliance of the specialty with the tasks and directions of expeditionary work;
- absence chronic diseases, preventing you from being on a long flight;
- possession English language at the Intermediate level;
- passion for scientific activities in your field of research, availability of scientific publications and presentations at conferences;
- absence of academic debt;
- presence of a foreign passport;
- Availability scientific supervisor to coordinate the research program.
If you feel that a trip to the Arctic is necessary for your scientific discoveries, that you cannot sleep peacefully without seeing it with your own eyes, and even if you meet all the criteria, fill out the form for a participant in the Arctic Floating University reserve fund. Perhaps you will become the next participant in the APU scientific expedition.
The history of Russia itself is truly paradoxical. Not only has everything heroic and glorious been accompanied for decades by the tragic and shameful - we have managed not to notice the great, we have not been able to be proud of what was worthy of both pride and admiration. The history of the Arctic in this regard is a bitter and edifying example from which it is never too late to learn.
Everything that happened in the Arctic in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century was perceived by the inhabitants of the mainland with enormous interest and admiration. The very word “polar explorer” became a symbol of everything heroic in the Land of the Soviets, and the biographies of those who were called the conquerors of the Pole, the Central Arctic, and the Northern Sea Route were published on the front pages of newspapers with no less detail than later - the biographies of the first cosmonauts.
It is hardly possible to establish with great accuracy exactly when the Arctic was “closed” from the eyes of mere mortals. Who did this, of course, is no secret: the “friend” and “father” of Soviet polar explorers, who undoubtedly loved his Arctic “children” - Joseph Stalin. Now we are not talking about closing the North from foreigners - this began in the ancient tsarist era, in the 17th – 18th centuries. True, Stalin made one curious relaxation in this regard: in the navigation of 1940. The German auxiliary cruiser Komet secretly crossed the Northern Sea Route to the east. He was accompanied by our icebreakers; the best Soviet Arctic pilots were on board the German; ice reconnaissance looked for safe passages in the ice for him. This was the result of the treacherous conspiracy between Stalin and Hitler, which was especially sinister because upon entering the Pacific Ocean, the Komet became a warship that threatened our future allies in the anti-fascist coalition. But the conversation now is about something else - about a direct ban on publications about the Arctic, about what happened every day in high latitudes, including the most striking, heroic events that would glorify our fatherland and strengthen its prestige.
They did not write about the escort of warships along the Northern Sea Route.
They did not write about the upcoming landing of the Papanins at the Pole, reporting about it after the fact, the next day. Later, this vicious practice was repeated during the polar voyage of the nuclear-powered icebreaker "Arktika" - as, we add, with all space launches up to the 80s.
During the war of 1941 - 1945, the coast of the Arctic Ocean became the front line, and, naturally, for all four years, our people received almost no information about how the Soviet Arctic lives, suffers, or buries its defenders (except for reports about the loud victories of the sailors of the Northern fleet in the Barents Sea). As if by inertia, all the information about what is happening in the Far North, about the weather and ice, about expeditions and finds, gains and losses for a good ten years post-war years also remained under lock and key. We were deprived of history, the right to know names and events, dates and biography! The whole country was plunged into the darkness of self-isolation, fencing off the world invisible but impenetrable." iron curtain" Meanwhile, in the Arctic, discoveries and exploits were being made on a scale quite comparable to what the famous pioneers of bygone eras did in the polar seas and polar skies. Every year, populous expeditions “North” were supplied to the high latitudes, comprehensively studying the nature of the Central Arctic. And in the spring of 1960, the second drifting station in history, the North Pole, was planted in the ice.
The public of our country and the foreign world learned that there was such a drift only four years later, when the SP-3 and SP-4 stations began their work in the polar ice. A year after Stalin’s death, a “massive” declassification of the Far North occurred and a belated desire to restore justice appeared. It turned out that the SP-2 station lived in the ice of the Eastern Arctic for 376 days, much longer than Papanin’s, that 11 winterers experienced ice breaks, repeated camp evacuations, a fire in the radio operator’s tent, summer floods, and cases of polar bear attacks on person, not to mention all kinds of hardships.
But the main thing: they worked in an atmosphere of incredible, insane secrecy, without the right to be themselves, like scouts thrown into an enemy lair. Even at the Arctic Institute, where that expedition was being prepared, even the relatives of those who went into the ice for a whole year knew nothing and, instead of the spectacular “SP”, were forced to put the number of a faceless mailbox on the envelopes. They were awarded by a secret Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, according to which the leader of the drift, Mikhail Mikhailovich Somov, became a Hero Soviet Union, and the rest received the Order of Lenin.
And only very recently it became clear that the station chief had orders to burn the documentation and blow up all the buildings if the “American enemy” approached the ice floe. One of the most important secrets of the Arctic was the creation of a nuclear test site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the mid-50s. For over 30 years, tests of monstrous hydrogen weapons were carried out there, and today Novaya Zemlya is wounded and seriously traumatized. It is impossible, even to a first approximation, to compile a list of irretrievable losses suffered by its nature - blue-white glaciers, huge bird colonies on coastal cliffs, tundra vegetation, the population of seals, walruses, polar bears.
Perhaps one of the most recent was the declassification of the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region. They first started talking about him openly only in 1992. Now we know about its creation in 1959, and about terrible disaster March 18, 1980, when a powerful explosion killed almost 60 people. It also became known that it was from here, from the cosmodrome near the city with the obligatory name Mirny, that the leaders were going to attack the overseas enemy with deadly missiles during the so-called Caribbean (Cuban) crisis of 1962.
The Far North was given a special “secrecy” by circumstances that were very far from considerations of common sense or even reasonable secrecy of a military-strategic nature; the reason for this was massive political repression.
The great terror that raged on the mainland in the 20s - 50s of the 20th century echoed loudly in the high latitudes. There was not a single sphere of human activity in the Arctic, not a single bearish corner that the punitive authorities would not reach, from where polar explorers of various specialties would not be taken to trial and punishment - sailors, pilots, scientists, geologists, winterers, economic and party workers, port workers, builders, teachers, doctors, including representatives of small indigenous peoples of the North (and there are at least about 30 of them).
As on the mainland, in the North “enemies of the people” were found in due proportions: saboteurs and saboteurs, Trotskyist-Zinovievite, Bukharin-Rykovite mercenaries, kulaks and subkulak operatives. They discovered them through denunciations, slanderous slander, created an unimaginable atmosphere of general suspicion, surveillance and denunciation, arrested, imprisoned, sent into disastrous exile, and destroyed.
It would seem, who could be prevented by people living in the Arctic in conditions of constant deprivation, danger, and mortal risk? What annoyance did they, icebreaker sailors, employees of polar stations, geologists looking for gold and tin, oil and coal, annoy the Stalinist regime?
Yes, that’s right, from the Arctic to the Arctic, to the terrible northern camps, romantic enthusiasts were taken, who devoted their lives to the study and development of these free, endless, alluring lands. They were transported along the glorious route of the Northern Sea Route, in the holds of steamships, on open barges, and these little ships got stuck in the ice, sank to the bottom along with their living cargo, which brave pilots did not fly to rescue, and mighty icebreakers did not rush at full speed.
One of the first to be arrested at the very beginning of the 30s was the venerable geologist professor Pavel Vladimirovich Wittenburg, a famous explorer of Spitsbergen, Kola Peninsula, Yakutia, Vaygach Islands. It was there, on Vaygach, where he had previously made major discoveries, that the scientist was taken to the lead-zinc mines. Fortunately, he managed to survive and after many years returned to his native Leningrad. But this was not destined for how many of his colleagues, friends, and associates.
Professor R. L. Samoilovich was shot in 1939. The same fate befell his good comrade, the USSR Consul General on Spitsbergen and the father of the future famous ballerina (who spent the winter with her parents in the Arctic as a girl) Mikhail Emmanuilovich Plisetsky. Professor Pavel Aleksandrovich Molchanov, who participated with Samoilovich in the expedition on the airship "Graf Zeppelin", died. Chelyuskin heroes Alexey Nikolaevich Bobrov, Ilya Leonidovich Baevsky, Pavel Konstantinovich Khmyznikov, radio fanatic Nikolai Reingoldovich Schmidt, who was the first to hear distress signals from the Red Tent Nobile, veteran of the Northern Sea Route, builder of the city and port of Igarka Boris Vasilyevich Lavrov, fell victims to repression.
In the Hydrographic Directorate of the Main Northern Sea Route alone, over 150 employees declared “alien elements” were arrested and dismissed from work. This is what they did with polar hydrographers, pioneers of the ice route, experts on its formidable dangers, lighthouse keepers - with people without whom normal life on the Northern Sea Route is impossible!
The scientists of the Arctic Institute, which was led by Samoilovich, were respectfully called “the USSR team” in those years. This unique “team” of like-minded people, selfless patriots of their country was almost completely exterminated in a matter of months. Of the leading scientists, only Professor Vladimir Yulievich Wiese was not touched, but how he was defamed, how he was insulted, how he was threatened for many, many years. The famous geologist and geographer Mikhail Mikhailovich Ermolaev, the leading expert on ice and sea currents Nikolai Ivanovich Evgenov, and the legendary polar explorer Nikolai Nikolaevich Urvantsev were sent to prisons and camps for enormous, unimaginable periods of time.
It was Urvantsev who, back in the 20s of the 20th century, discovered the richest deposits of copper, nickel, coal, graphite, and cobalt in Taimyr, in the area of the future Norilsk. And, according to the “good” tradition established by the punitive authorities, in 1940 he was forcibly sent there, to the place of his former (and future!) glory. Even in prison, he continued to work as a geologist, went on expeditions, wrote scientific works, however, they all settled in the depths of the “special storage” (this word denoted top-secret archives and book depositories that contained the invaluable works of people declared “enemies of the people” who had lost the right to their own name).
Even against such a background, the repressions of the times look absolutely monstrous Patriotic War. The most eminent Arctic captains were arrested right at sea, bringing ridiculous charges against them of sabotage and treason.
Arkhangelsk navigator Vasily Pavlovich Korelsky served eight years in the camps, and his namesake, captain of the icebreaking steamer “Sadko” Alexander Gavrilovich Korelsky, was sentenced to death because his ship ran into an unmarked shoal in stormy weather in the Kara Sea.
The famous polar pilots Fabio Brunovich Farikh and Vasily Mikhailovich Makhotkin were arrested during the war years; after the war, several more aviators were added to them, as well as the famous Arctic captain Yuri Konstantinovich Khlebnikov, who was awarded the Order of Nakhimov, which is rare for a civil navy sailor. He was sent to the “Stalinist resort” - to Vorkuta, where the prisoner Khlebnikov had to mine polar coal for ten years.
Polar explorers were also caught at wintering sites farthest from the mainland. The head of the polar station on Franz Josef Land, Philip Ivanovich Balabin, and a young talented oceanologist and employee of one of the Chukotka stations, Alexander Chausov, were arrested and disappeared. The head of the winter camp on Domashny Island in the Kara Sea, Alexander Pavlovich Babich, a famous radio operator, one of the first honorary polar explorers in the country, was finished off for nine years on death row and in the Trans-Baikal camps, beating out of him a confession that he wanted to “hand over our Arctic fleet to the enemy.” In May 1950, two months before his death in a concentration camp, Babich sent his family to Leningrad last letter: “Sometimes I artificially convince myself that I continue wintering and simply due to circumstances cannot return to Mainland. But will this “wintering” end someday?”
The terrible “wintering” ended for the vast majority of innocently convicted people, erased from history and from people’s memory only after 1956.
The history of exploration of the “land of icy horror,” as the Arctic was once called, is inextricably linked with the history of the development of technological progress and humanity as a whole. Polar expeditions were first declared as a national project under Peter the Great.
In the mid-16th century, Russian explorers and Pomors walked along the tributaries of the rivers of Siberia along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. In 1648, a group of sailors, together with Semyon Dezhnev and Fedot Popov, went to Pacific Ocean, bypassing the Chukotka Peninsula. They sailed on single-mast Pomeranian rowing sailing ships - kochas.
The exploration of the New Siberian Islands began with the expeditions of 1686-1688. I. Tolstoukhova and 1712 M. Vagina and Y. Permyakova. United several polar expeditions in 1733-1742. to the Arctic Ocean Great Northern. It included the campaign of Vitus Bering, thanks to which a lot of work was done to explore the northern part of Siberia from the mouth of the Pechora River and Vaygach Island to the Commander Islands and Chukotka and Kamchatka.
This was the first grandiose project in the history of Russia in the Arctic. The map included the Kuril Islands, the coastal part of the island of Honshu, and the coast of the Arctic Ocean in the range from Arkhangelsk to Kolyma. The next significant event in this area were the expeditions of Semyon Chelyuskin, who devoted his entire life to the development of the northeastern borders of Russia, in particular Taimyr. In honor of him, the northern tip of Asia was named Cape Chelyuskin.
It is also necessary to note the Russian navigators Wrangel and Matyushkin, who have four polar expeditions on drifting ice. F. Litke is considered a major explorer of the Arctic land. During his circumnavigation of the world (which began in 1826), he explored and described many islands, identified key points on the Kamchatka coast from Avacha Bay towards the north, etc. This was one of the most successful polar enterprises of that time.
The name of Admiral Stepan Makarov is well known, on whose idea the icebreaker Ermak was built in England in 1899 (the first powerful ship of that time). It was intended for systematic communication through the Kara Sea with the Yenisei and Ob, as well as for polar research.
Expeditions on the icebreakers “Vaigach” and “Taimyr” from 1910 to 1915. completed a large amount of work on a geographical inventory from Cape Dezhnev to the mouth of the Lena River, leaving navigational signs on the coast. Among the others famous researchers Arctic - Georgy Sedov, Nikolay Zubov and a number of others.
The Russian Arctic region was of great importance during Soviet power. From 1923 to 1933, 19 polar stations began their radio meteorological work on the islands of the Arctic Ocean and the coast.
The expeditions of 1930-1940 wrote a special page and a fundamentally new implementation of research opportunities in the history of research. on the icebreakers “Litke”, “Krasin”, “Sibiryakov” and “G. Sedov”. From 1991 to 2001 due to difficult economic situation Russia's more than half a century of activity in northern latitudes was interrupted.
Currently, leading scientific institutes are developing various programs for studying the Arctic, and more than a dozen expeditions are working.
Sixth Arctic Expedition
Many countries and travelers have attempted to travel through the polar expanses by exploring the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The courage of these people can only inspire admiration.
There are still legends about the 1960 Soviet expedition on the Ob. In addition to the fact that the researchers spent a year wintering in difficult polar conditions and performing important scientific work, the young surgeon Leonid Rogozov had to remove his appendix himself. The expedition members were cut off from the mainland by ice and could only rely on their own strength. The Russian doctor decided to perform an emergency operation.
If we talk about more modern research, then it is necessary to note the sixth expedition to the north, “Kara-Winter 2015”, which was organized by the Rosneft company. During its course, in addition to highly specialized data, unique data was obtained that can be classified as a breakthrough in the development of the Arctic. Over the past 20 years, this has been the largest project in the world.
Polar expeditions to the Arctic
Polar travel to the kingdom of ice has been undertaken since ancient times. The first information about Siberia and the adjacent borders of the Arctic Ocean in Russia was obtained back in the 14th century. Since then, many attempts (successful and not so successful) have been made to develop sea and land routes in the Arctic.
In total, the number of research trips today is already approaching a hundred.
Marine Arctic geological exploration expedition
In 1972, a polar association was created in Murmansk, which later became known as the Marine Arctic Geological Exploration Expedition. The goal is to study the Arctic shelf and determine prospects for the development of oil fields, gas and solid minerals in the Kara, Barents and White Seas.
Today this is already a whole Russian Institute, working in a number of areas related to both geological exploration and scientific polar work.
High latitude Arctic expedition
At the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Federal service on hydrometeorology and environmental monitoring there is a high-latitude arctic expedition, which organizes drifting research trips in the ice of the Arctic Ocean.
This Russian center carries out research, oceanological, hydrological, geodetic, geophysical and other types of work, conducts polar aerological, ice observations, etc.
Arctic expedition and appendix
The Russian Arctic expedition to the North Pole in 1960 became famous throughout the world after surgeon Leonid Rogozov had to remove his own appendix in the fourth month of wintering. He was the only doctor on the expedition and, based on his symptoms, determined acute appendicitis. Conservative treatment did not help, and there was no opportunity to return to the mainland.
To survive in the Arctic, Rogozov, assisted by station employees, performed an operation on himself within two hours, cutting out his appendix. The very next day he began to recover and a week later the stitches were removed. Participants in polar research were able to return home only after a year. The well-known song “While you are here in the bathtub with tiles” by Vysotsky is dedicated to the surgeon Rogozov.
He operated without gloves, almost by touch. Upon his return from the Arctic, he was awarded awards, including the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
The achievement of the young surgeon in polar conditions is listed in the USSR Book of Records and the Russian Book of Records.
