All news

Arctic discoveries continue: what scientists find in expedition to Novaya Zemlya

Onboard the Ilya Muroments icebreaker the travelers crossed the Barents and Kara Seas, sailed to the Yuzhny Island of the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, along the Matochkin Shar Strait, which divides the archipelago and which connects the two seas

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS Correspondent Vera Kostamo/. The expedition and cultural project, dubbed Russia’s Main Faсade. History, Events, People (Arctic expeditions of the Russian Geographical Society, the Defense Ministry and the Northern Fleet) headed for the Yuzny Island, the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago. During a dozen stops on the island the participants shot scenes for a future film, and also studied routes of expeditions led by Fyodor Litke, Fyodor Rozmyslov, Savva Loshkin and other explorers. The experts were searching for camps and were describing found artefacts. This story is about the expedition’s scientific work.

Onboard the Ilya Muroments icebreaker the travelers crossed the Barents and Kara Seas, sailed to the Yuzhny Island of the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, along the Matochkin Shar Strait, which divides the archipelago and which connects the two seas.

Pink bear and archeological discoveries

Silver-colored sea-treated glimmering logs cover the shores. In case of an emergency, it won’t be a problem to start a fire (normally, expedition participants go ashore on a motor boat. When on the ground, the teams do what they need to do, and by a certain time they are to return onboard - TASS). One day, the waves were so high, that the boat could pick up the group only a day later.

The natural litter (the logs, algae, animals’ bones) is mixed with anthropogenic waste. It’s on the wild shores, where people haven’t been for years - plastic packages of different ages, fishing nets. We are sailing along the Basov Strait, hoping to see ashore remains of houses - archaeologists will describe them and will verify the coordinates.

"Our task is to monitor the known artefacts on Novaya Zemlya’s Yuzhny Island," said Kirill Smelev of St. Petersburg’s State University’s laboratory of archaeology, historical sociology and cultural heritage. "Mostly, we are inspecting the objects, which Petr Boyarsky discovered back in the 1990s during the Marine Arctic Complex Expedition."

During this voyage, we’ve seen how those objects have changed over three decades.

"Every archaeological object continues to live. These territories are unique for the minimal anthropogenic impact on the cultural heritage. The damaging factors here are first of all of natural origins: wind, snow, ice, bears. In other locations, almost 90% of objects have been lost due to the anthropogenic impact. A huge remaining problem is the robbery of monuments. At the territories with medieval and even earlier objects, people tend to grasp everything they can," Kirill said.

His position is the archipelago’s all the objects must be preserved where they are. In the Arctic objects live for centuries in the initial environment, and natural ruining is a part of their life term. At times, such ruining may open new parts of an object, and then even at well-known objects new discoveries and findings become possible.

The archaeological works during this expedition are limited to photo and video recordings, to topographic landscape images.

"There’s much work to do. I wish being ashore were not limited to a few hours. Many objects require longer presence. Every year, the methods get improved, and we have many more options than what our predecessors used 30 years ago. Thus, even at well-known objects we are able to receive new information," the archaeologist said.

We are ashore. Clouds in the Arctic are amazing: they have many layers, many floors, and they are funny. We can see "UFOs" and "dragons" floating in the sky.

Our boat moves slowly and smashes onto rocks. The water by the shore is muddy, and we have not noticed the danger. The engine fails. We are drifting. The wind and current pull the boat to the rocks. The guys are rowing to take the boat away from the shore.

All of a sudden, we see a bear is walking slowly to the coastline. It’s well-fed, like any other bear we could see on Novaya Zemlya. It bends to the water, sniffs. The animal seems to be about to swim in our direction. The bear yawns, licks the lips. The setting sun paints the animal’s fur pink. The bear and we are staring at each other.

Finally, we manage to find a safe place to anchor. The boat now is not floating towards the rocks or the bear. The predator is considering whether to swim to us or rather not, then turns and walks away. How far - we can’t tell.

On the shore there are remains of the Pomors’ uninspected houses, which the archaeologists want to observe. We start a drone and take images.

The sun rises in a few hours. The thin and tender light fills the air, touching the rocks. They change colors and, as if, shapes - they are becoming more round, crimpy.

Chattering fills the silence. Vast thoughts emerge from the clean world around us. Some say they feel like a grain of sand, like something tiny in that nature. Others say, no "we’ve been talking about eternity, but now the feeling we share is not loneliness, rather the unity."

A scow was sent to fetch us. It had taken ashore another group and returned it to the vessel. The scow and the boat anchor side-by-side, and the group gets onto the scow. The boat is towed.

"My interest is on the seafloor"

When all the teams go ashore, marine biologists remain aboard. While the vessel is anchored, they sample water near the Yuzhny Island to receive the data they have been missing. Those are closed water areas, and it is very complicated to arrange work there. The experts sample water, benthos (the organisms inhabiting the seafloor), and another samples to check radioecology.

"Whenever I say I’m a sea biologist, people normally wouldn’t understand what this means. For example, they may ask about crabs. Practically nobody imagines who else could be lifted from the bottom," said Zinaida Rumyantseva of the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute (of the Russian Academy of Sciences). She is holding a hose to wash another sample on a special table right on the deck.

Her first expedition was in autumn, 2019 - a cold and stormy period. She joined the expedition to "get lost" - the Arctic very quickly selects the people who care for it.

Zinaida has worked in most different conditions: in storms, in snow - regardless of anything she has to stand on deck for hours washing the samples in ice-cold water.

"Why would I need it all? It’s interesting. My motivation is to learn the new. To see something about what we even do not think," Zinaida said. "The expeditions have made me more mature. We face many complicated situations, hard working conditions, but anyway I look forward to every new trip. The sea attracts me. It’s the feeling how little the human is amid the nature. Right, I may get cold, worn out, things may fail, but anyway this is what I love. I am a part of something big, something real. Something unknown. It’s more than just a job. This is love."

The main instrument sea biologists are using is the Van Veen dredger - a bucket, which weights 70 kilograms. It gets to the bottom by means of a winch. Therefore, the work on deck is the work of a team. Denis Moiseev, an ocean studies expert, who leads the expedition on behalf of RGO (the Russian Geographical Society), is working with Zinaida.

Down, up! The dredger sinks to the bottom, captures the soil surface layer and returns to the deck. It is emptied onto the washing table so that experts could see what surprises the dredger has lifted.

"We were at rocky soils, and it was tricky to lift anything, but we were lucky to lift a big stone covered by invertebrates. Getting attached to anything is their lifestyle. They eat what they manage to grab. The stone we’ve got is a separate planet."

Zinaida’s scientific focus is Gastropoda - invertebrate organisms, sea snails.

"It’s a great luck to see your focus group in the samples. Most often we can see polychaete worms. I dream to find my own object of study, which is a rare occasion. I’ve seen a snail - Margarites groenlandicus (Gmelin, 1791). It was beautiful, pearl-shimmering. It is quite probable we may see in the samples a snail, which no one has seen yet. In the waters near Novaya Zemlya biologists have identified 86 species of gastropods, where their total number is 200. There’s much more to study in the open sea."

Whether the dredger grasps the soil, whether it brings something new or returns empty - this depends on the weather, on streams, waves. After many hours on deck, Zinaida walks down to the lab. She registers every sample (data, station, coordinates, temperature, salinity, depth) and stores it. Further work will be done at the institute.

"We have been losing biological diversity every minute"

Inside our cabin for ladies, there is not much space but it is very interesting. In the evening, Zinaida and Natalia, who work at the same institute, discuss the day. Ornithologist, Professor Natalia Lebedeva says the expedition’s format is new to her.

"I’ve got used to be working in a team with biologists. In a complex expedition, there are many other specialists. Working on the shore may be complicated, as everyone has own tasks. But anyway, results may be very interesting. Some people are like tiny birds on a branch and they can see nothing though the leaves. Others are eagles, overseeing everything from high above. People, coming to such unique places, must have a wide vision."

During this expedition, Natalia has registered 44 species of birds and mammals. A few meetings were surprising. For example, mute swans seen far from the usual range during the breeding season. Natalia has seen and photographed a white seagull in the Matochkin Shar Strait - this species is on the Red Data Book.

"To me Novaya Zemlya has become the land of skuas. We’ve seen all the four species (large, short-tailed, long-tailed and medium-sized) at the same time. For the first time — more than a hundred birds at one point. I was shocked how many they ware. Skuas normally have diffuse colonies (sparse, not concentrated). We could see many young and many grownup birds. They’ve allowed us quite close to them."

Natalya’s another direction in the expedition is eco-toxicology, radio-ecology.

"I’ve studied for many years how radionuclides migrate in natural ecosystems. Sea birds are a very interesting indicator. They feed in the ocean, bring from the water to the shore organic substances as food, they bring them to the ground ecosystem. Specific soils are forming at bird rookeries. I’ve taken a few samples."

The experts have sampled the soil and moss to determine the soil fauna. In one of her studies, Natalia has suggested that migrating birds can carry not only parasites, but also incidental "passengers".

The suggestion has been confirmed. Oribatid mites, soil inhabitants, were among such transit travelers. As many as 85 species of such mites have been found in the Arctic.

"I’ve collected samples on Novaya Zemlya, and I hope we’ll add some of them to the list of species, which has been made for this archipelago. Why is it so important? The thing is - we have been losing the biological diversity not every year, but every minute. Sometimes, we are just determining a species, and lose it almost the same instant. We are unable to forecast whether any of the lost species might be important for the humanity," Natalia said.

Arctic earthquakes: past and future

Nadezhda Andreyeva and Ruslan Zhostkov are geophysics from the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth (the Russian Academy of Sciences). In this expedition they are looking for proofs of modern and ancient earthquakes. The most powerful quakes were registered on Novaya Zemlya in 1986 - 4.8 magnitude and in 2010 - 4/7. The regional seismic network is not developed, and the observation term is not long. Thus, finding proofs of ancient earthquakes is a promising direction.

"On Novaya Zemlya, we’ve found local traces of strong ancient earthquakes. We can determine events that took place several centuries ago by a number of signs. For example, by a large rupture on the surface, which may be confined to active quakes. We have identified one of the kind. Satellite images show it can be traced at a distance of about seven kilometers. Other signs are landslides, rockslides, avalanches, positions of stones on flat surfaces, boulders that are thrown away from rocks, etc. We collect all the data and conduct the area’s comprehensive analysis. We use a special scale - ESI-2007 (Environmental seismic intensity) - to determine the intensity of paleo earthquakes," said Nadezhda Andreyeva, an expert at the institute’s seismic-tectonic laboratory.

Research in the Arctic is difficult not only due to weather or logistics, but also due to the permafrost. The soil freezing and thawing also affect the landscape formation, making its shapes similar to traces of ancient earthquakes. However, real seismic changes of the relief disappear quickly. In order to understand what data relate to earthquakes, during the expedition scientists conduct additional studies — they use geophysical methods, one of them being the method of micro-seismic probing.

"In 2005, Andrey Gorbatikov of our institute offered this method. It requires a minimal set of equipment and a few hours of work - which is very convenient in the field conditions. During this expedition, we have been using eight mobile seismic stations. They look like metal cylinders, filled with all the necessary electronic stuff," explains Ruslan Zhostkov, senior researcher at the institute’s laboratory for fundamental aspects of environmental geophysics and volcanology. - We bury the stations into the ground in a certain order so that they could receive vibrations the best possible way. And also to avoid wind gusts’ affects."

This method shows vertical disturbances in the geological structure, that is, faults located deep underground, which could have emerged due to earthquakes.

The experts use Russian-made seismic stations, which can work under water. Their hull is very strong and heavy, which has turned out very important not only for work underwater.

"In 2020, on Franz Josef Land, a bear dug out two stations at a time, played with them, bit them - we could see teeth traces. Therefore, the stations cannot be any lighter or made of plastics," Ruslan said.

The scientists use a copter to take photos from 300-500 meters. Later, an application merges the images into one picture to show a detailed layout of the area. By using this method, specialists can see the features they are unable to notice from the ground.

"We have found traces of ancient earthquakes, which suggest that major events that have occurred earlier may repeat in the future, and we must get prepared to this. All facilities in the Arctic are important and must be built taking into account earthquakes are possible," Nadezhda said.