#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Tomorrow, May 14, the scientific expedition Master of the Arctic – 2021 starts. Its participants will conduct an aerial survey of polar bears and marine mammals in the Russian Arctic, as well as assess the environmental situation as a whole.
The expedition will be divided in two stages. The first – air one – will begin this week, May 14. In search of polar bears, scientists will go along ten routes by plane L-410 from the airport in the village of Tiksi.
Serious work is ahead – each of the routes will be a thousand kilometers at least. Specialists will need to explore the little-studied waters of the Laptev sea and the East Siberian sea.
The second stage of the work is planned to begin on June 10, and the starting point of the scientific journey will be the seaport of Arhangelsk. On the Mikhail Somov vessel, the researchers will reach the Franz Josef Land archipelago, find bears by helicopter and start tagging: they will put on satellite collars on the animals to track migration, and take biological samples. Scientists are allowed to catch ten adults.
According to expert estimates, about 25 thousand polar bears now live in the world, of which about eight thousand are in Russia.
Let us remind you that the ecological project Master of the Arctic was created in March 2020. This is a joint initiative of Rosprirodnadzor (Russian nature protecting organization), the Arctic Initiatives center and the Clean Seas international ecological fund. During last year’s expedition, specialists flew over more than ten thousand kilometers of coastal areas and took over 30 thousand photographs.
We also reported that a hybrid of a grizzly bear and a polar bear appeared in the North.
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Text: Mikhail Tuaev, Photo: nat-geo.ru, wwf.ru, moya-planeta.ru
