MURMANSK, August 27. /TASS/. The Northern Fleet's hydrographers confirmed five new islands in the course of an expedition to the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, the fleet’s press service said on Tuesday.

"The islands are between 900 and 54,500 square meters," the press service said.

The Northern Fleet’s specialists have been using the Earth’s remote sensing data. Between 2015 and 2018, the experts confirmed more than 30 new islands, capes and bays. The information obtained through topographic surveying is double-checked and then is added to maps and navigation materials and instructions.

The fleet’s specialists made topographic pictures and descriptions of the new islands.

Arctic expedition

The Northern Fleet’s expedition, organized in association with the Russian Geographical Society’s Center on Northern Fleet, its scientists and the media, began on August 15 onboard the Altai rescue tug. Participants in the unique project follow the routes of Julius von Payer’s expedition of 1874, Frederick Jackson’s expedition of 1897, the expeditions by Evelyn Baldwin and Georgy Brusilov, and others. They have been conducting scientific and environmental studies and exploring Soviet military infrastructure and traces of past centuries’ expeditions.

The crew have sailed about 2,000 miles across the Barents and Kara Seas, carrying out research on the Pakhtusov Island, Vise and Blagopoluchiye Bays. They examined the remains of the weather station, which was destroyed in 1943 by Germany’s U-711 submarine.

The expedition has explored the Hooker Island’s southern coastline and made a few glacier observations. The Altai tug followed the route of the Sedov icebreaking steamer, which brought a Soviet expedition to Franz Josef Land in 1929.