TASS, August 24. The Clean Arctic - Vostok77 expedition participants during the Kola Peninsula studies expect to survey microplastics in fish in the White and Barents Seas, the expedition's press service said.

The expedition's experts, who went ashore off the Klavdiya Elanskaya vessel on the Kola Peninsula's Tersky Coast, have sampled three fish species in the surf zone.

"We expect that in the White Sea, which receives water from the Northern Dvina and other rivers, there will be much more microplastics than in the Barents Sea. Our expedition's leader Andrey Nagibin has dubbed the Gulf Stream the "North Atlantic litter carrier." It brings into the Barents Sea litter and plastics from the US and North European coasts. Those are literally islands of litter - they mostly are scraps of fishing nets. Nets rub against each other, against rocks, and small crustaceans crush nets turning them into insoluble dust that gets into commercial fish," the expedition's participant, Oksana Tolstykh, said.

Social studies and social anthropology

The expedition plans 21 studies in sociology and social anthropology. According to the Field Office methods, researchers conduct in person some of the interviews and surveys, and some - in the form of an in-depth interview by phone or online, where all the conversations are recorded. The researchers are searching for informants for future interviewing among residents of the Kola Peninsula's Tersky Coast.

Some informants are private fishers, local residents engaged in the fishing businesses, and representatives of local authorities. These people will become participants in the study to assess the current state of informal and official fishing. The study, conducted in all the Arctic districts, will identify problems in traditional and industrial fishing, as viewed by the people involved in that sector.

The expedition participants collect detailed information about all local historical objects that may become parts of future tourist complexes. Such objects include lighthouses, a waterfall on the Kolvitsa River, ancient amethyst mines, where many stones are still found, or herds of feral horses with white manes and tails.

Some experts hope to find in the south of the Kola Peninsula the world's oldest tree. There, the tundra landscape with low mountain plateaus is quite similar to more southern landscapes, such as in Sweden's Fulufjallet National Park, where grows the world's oldest spruce, dubbed Old Tikko, - its age is more than 9,500 years. "The spruce has managed to live that long in this climate due to the root system. The trunk above the soil has died several times, but grew back as a clone from survived roots. There are many similar trees on the Kola Peninsula, as we can see in this expedition," said Arina Suleymanova, the expedition's press officer.

About expedition

The Clean Arctic - Vostok-77 scientific expedition begins with studies of the Kola Peninsula's ecology. At the first of the expedition's seven routes, specialists will assess sea pollution with microplastics brought by the Gulf Stream. One of the goals is to study and preserve rare Northern languages.

Clean Arctic - Vostok-77 is the biggest scientific expedition in terms of the number of participants in continental high-latitude scientific expeditions over the history of the North's studies. It will have 77 expedition teams. The route has been structured to meet the objectives, set by the Russian Academy of Sciences' research centers, and in accordance with due studies under university grants. Over a year-long term, 700 participants from more than 20 research centers and federal universities, as well as the Russian Geographical Society volunteers, will conduct 200 studies at routes that will be as long as 12,000 km. Such a large-scale expedition is organized for the first time in recent 40 years. TASS is the expedition's general information partner.