Russia and Canada, the two biggest Arctic countries by area, have encouraged this fear: the Arctic stirs fierce nationalist sentiment in both.
The Arctic sea ice area is expected to continue decreasing until September.
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago is a vast area, comprising some 36, 000 islands.
Compared to September conditions in the 1980s and 1990s, this represents a 45 percent reduction in the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice.
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The oil spill has also rejuvenated a campaign by environmental groups and native coastal villagers to reduce the area of the Arctic open to oil exploration and overhaul drilling regulations.
And in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand).
Yellowknife Bay was named for an area in the Canadian Arctic where Grotzinger worked as a young man, which has rock formations nearly four billion years old.
As summer ice in the Arctic has declined in recent years, the area has become the subject of intense interest from oil and gas companies.
For the past three years, the vast cap of shining-white ice covering the Arctic has melted away in summer to an area that would have been unbelievable just a decade ago.
However, although the sea ice is shrinking -- covering less total area as well as becoming thinner -- the Arctic is still a world ruled by ice, a lesson well learned when the Polar Pioneer encountered heavy pack ice between Svalbard and the eastern coast of Greenland, forcing the captain to divert the boat and drop speed to just a few knots.
They come from a group from the University of Alberta, who were exploring an area around the Teardrop Glacier, high in the Canadian Arctic.
It can only operate for 12 hours at a time, which will keep humans in the area, but its ability to run untethered below storms and cold Arctic winds should dramatically expand the territory that researchers can cover during their share of a larger five- to six-week journey.
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When I would walk outside on a winter's day in Fairbanks, a mere 125 miles from the Arctic Circle, I would divert my breath up to my eyes (the only exposed area of my body) to keep them from freezing shut.
The study area extends from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska on the west and through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the east.
This brings humpbacks, minkes and king-of-the-sea blue whales steaming through the area, as well as chatty white belugas, which otherwise are seen only in the Arctic.
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