Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
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Russia on quest to claim North Pole seabed
Quote:
Russia on quest to claim North Pole seabed
by Douglas Birch
August 2, 2007
A Russian mini-submarine was lowered into the water yesterday from the research vessel Akademik Fedorov to perform test dives in the Arctic Ocean. Scientists plan to stake their claim on the seafloor by dropping a metal capsule carrying the Russian flag onto the seabed.
MOSCOW (AP) – Two deep-diving Russian miniature submarines today descended more than 2 1/2 miles to the ocean floor beneath the North Pole, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The expedition leader, Artur Chilingarov, who was abroad one MIR 1 three-person sub, told colleagues on a research ship on the surface that his craft had reached the seabed.
"The landing was smooth, the yellowish ground is around us, no sea dwellers are seen," he said, according to Tass.
In a feat mixing science, exploration and the scramble for potential oil and gas fields, crews of the MIR 1 and MIR 2 are engaged in what Russian authorities called the first dive to the ocean floor at Earth's northernmost point.
The crew of the MIR 1 planned to drop a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag on the bottom, symbolically claiming almost half of the planet's northern polar region for Moscow.
The Rossiya atomic icebreaker plowed a path to the pole through a sheet of multiyear ice, clearing the way for the Akademik Fedorov research ship to follow, said Sergei Balyasnikov, a spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic research institute that prepared the expedition.
"For the first time in history, people will go down to the seabed under the North Pole," Mr. Balyasnikov said. "It's like putting a flag on the moon."
The voyage, led by polar explorer and Russian legislator Artur Chilingarov, has some scientific goals, including the study of Arctic plants and animals. But its chief goal appears to be advancing Russia's political and economic influence by strengthening its legal claims to the huge gas and oil deposits thought to lie beneath the Arctic seafloor.
The planting of the flag is purely symbolic. Two Americans — medical doctor Frederick A. Cook and Navy civil engineer Robert E. Peary — each claimed to have been first to plant a flag in the ice above the North Pole in 1908 and 1909 respectively.
Regardless which, if either, first marked the spot, the act had no bearing in international law and was meaningless because the pack ice over the pole is in constant motion across the surface of the Arctic Ocean.
More significantly, Russia hopes to use geologic data being gathered by expedition scientists to prop up its claims to more than 460,000 square miles of the Arctic shelf — which, by some estimates, may contain 10 billion tons of oil and gas deposits.
About 100 scientists aboard the Akademik Fedorov are specifically looking for evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge — a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region — is a geologic extension of Russia, and therefore can be claimed by it under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The subs also will collect specimens of Arctic plants and animals and videotape the dives.
The expedition reflects an intense rivalry among Russia, the United States, Canada and other nations whose shores face the polar ocean for the Arctic's icebound riches.
The State Department noted that Russia has not made public the research purportedly backing its position and said the best available scientific evidence suggests the ridges in question are oceanic by nature "and thus not part of any country's continental shelf."
"While the United States remains skeptical, we have not had the opportunity to examine any of the recently obtained data," said Leslie Phillips, a department spokeswoman. "We wish the Russian scientists a safe expedition."
Moscow has claimed the polar region since at least the days of the Bolsheviks. It argued to the United Nations in 2002 that geological data backed up this claim. The U.N. rejected Moscow's application then, citing lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009.
The U.S. Senate has not ratified U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea, which would give Washington a seat on the panel that will consider and eventually rule on the Russian claim.
Miss Phillips said the Bush administration would continue to press hard for ratification in order to give the United States a voice on the commission.
The Russians are not the only ones eyeing the Arctic seabed. Denmark hopes to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the Danish territory of Greenland, not Russia. Canada, meanwhile, plans to spend $7 billion to build and operate up to eight Arctic patrol ships in a bid to help protect its sovereignty.
Congress is considering an $8.7 billion budget reauthorization bill for the U.S. Coast Guard that includes $100 million to operate and maintain the nation's three polar icebreakers. The bill also authorizes the Coast Guard to construct two new vessels.
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), they'd attack. Or something.
Re: Russia on quest to claim North Pole seabed... pictures forged?!?
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