Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Arctic expedition reaches the ice
U.S. and Russian scientists exploring the Arctic ocean finally reached ice on Monday, about 435 miles (700 km) northwest of Barrow, Alaska.
On a year when the Arctic sea ice has receded in the summer to its third-smallest on record, researchers on the RUSALCA expedition got the opportunity to study the water, sea life and the ocean floor at a location where there is rarely open water.
The mission’s science chief, Terry Whitledge, said it he did not expect explore such a northerly location without an icebreaker.
The team took core samples from the seabed, more than 600 metres (1,968 feet) down from the surface.
Zodiac man gets his day
Rodney Russ lives for the times he is at the rudder of a Zodiac.
For the owner of Heritage Expeditions, the New Zealand-based company that is operating the Russian research ship Professor Khromov in the Bering Sea, the more challenging the conditions the better.
“The rougher the waves, the more difficult the landing, the more remote and obscure the place, the more I enjoy it,” Russ said in a corridor on the Khromov. 
Fishing for information, Part II
The last of the data-gathering moorings to be plucked from the Bering Sea proved to be the most troublesome.
This one was several miles north of the Bering Strait in U.S. waters, and it took a few hours to steam up there in the Professor Khromov, the ship the RUSALCA team is using for the joint U.S.-Russian oceanographic expedition. 
Fishing for information
The research vessel Professor Khromov is just a few kms off the easternmost point of Siberia, and U.S. technologist Kevin Taylor is struggling to reel in an orange buoy that had been deep beneath the Bering Strait for nearly a year.
The first time he tries, the ship veers too far away from the prize and must make a slow, wide turn for another pass. The second time, Taylor’s hook is not quite ready and the float bobs again into the Khromov’s wake. This takes practice, even in calm waters.
