Russian Geographical Society expedition discovers fjord on Ushakov Island
TASS, October 9. A joint expedition of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) and the Russian Defense Ministry discovered a fjord on the Ushakov Island during the studies near the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago, organized during the Remember War expedition, RGS's press service said.
"A complex expedition of RGS and the Defense Ministry to the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago is verifying navigation maps and continues to explore the Ushakov Island. <...> The RGS expedition has discovered an earlier unknown fjord on the Ushakov Island. This small ice-covered island of 328 sq. km is located between the archipelagos of Severnaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land, in the northern part of the Kara Sea in the Arctic Ocean," the press service said.
The expedition works onboard the Romuald Muklevich hydrographic vessel.
"The studies around the island have shown that in the location where the glacier was previously, right now is the splashing sea with a depth of up to 15-17 meters. Theoretically, we were supposed to be on the edge of an ice dome, but we ended up about half a kilometer away from it - this is how it has shrunk around the perimeter. Unfortunately, the polar station's all buildings have collapsed together with the glacier. During the survey of the island, we found a fjord, which had never been marked on any maps. The fjord extends for a kilometer into the heart of the ice dome. We were able to enter it, to conduct research and measurements," the press service quoted the expedition's participant, a documentary filmmaker and traveler Leonid Kruglov as saying.
If the fjord does not collapse for a long time, it will be granted the status of a new geographical object, specialists say.
"Despite the difficult ice conditions in the Laptev and Kara Seas, the hydrographers are surveying the bottom relief in poorly explored areas of the Arctic archipelagos. They collect data to refine and update the existing navigation maps. They measure depths, in particular those that were mapped in the years when measurements were carried out by less accurate methods," the press service said.
