The second expedition that worked in the Arctic under an environmental project to research polar bears has returned to Arkhangelsk. The researchers who took part in the Master of the Arctic project spent 20 days on board the research vessel Mikhail Somov, reports the regional government’s press center.

The members of the expedition visited the polar station on Cape Svyatoi Nos and surveyed the islands of the Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land archipelagoes.

The expedition’s main objective was to estimate the number of polar bears in the area, learn more about their migration patterns and routes, and tag some polar bears.  Under the project, they also counted marine mammals and assessed the overall environmental situation in the Arctic.

“This was the first time that expedition members have been on board a vessel which allowed us to work using a helicopter,” said Ilya Mordvintsev, the research leader at the second stage of the expedition and a leading researcher at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Thanks to this, we had an opportunity to approach the objects of our interest faster and get closer. Each of the six flights was effective – we tracked animals and examined them. We put tracking collars on two female polar bears and took biological samples from male polar bears.”

Soon the research vessel will again set out for the Arctic.

The Master of the Arctic project has been carried out for two years in a row, on the initiative of Rosprirodnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources), by scientists from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences and employees from the Clean Seas International Environmental Fund with support from the Arctic Initiatives Center. The organisers of the project in the Arkhangelsk Region received support from the regional Ministry of Forestry.