Pictures from the Arctic
This section of Bennett Island, one of the De Long islands in the East Siberian Sea, looks like an half-sunk ocean liner
Drifting wood on the beach in Tiksi...
Unloading the rubber boats from our mother ship SOMOV, to execute a final open dive in the East Siberian Sea
Our good old soviet-built (1975) ship is doing very well in the East Siberian Sea...
How to access a remote island in the East Siberian Sea: need the perfect combination of ice, wind, swells, fog or lack thereof...
– if solid ice around, just walk...
– if no ice and no swells, rubber boats...
– if ice, some swells and winds not too strong: helicopter.
– if no ice but swells and fog: stay on the ship!
We found very little ice on the way to our exploration of the New Siberian and De Long islands: probably just a combination of currents, winds... We were very lucky to be able to access all the De Long islands as a result.
For the historical context of our Pax Arctica New Siberian Island expedition, must read: http://ow.ly/dp1430fxyP3 or even better, the entire book Kingdom of the Ice... narrative non-fiction as a page-turner... http://www.hamptonsides.com/writing/in-the-kingdom-of-ice/
Professor Alexei Tikhonov, Director of the Zoology Institute in St. Petersburg tells us everything we ever wanted to know about fauna and flora of the East Siberian Sea and its islands... What are these rocks discoveries about? Past human presence? Answers in the expedition film!
Larisa Shelokhovskaya, a senior biologist at the Ministry of Natural Resources of Yakutia enlightened us all about the richness of Yakutian fauna and flora, but also about the cleaning work from past pollution which remains to be done, especially on the Arctic coast.
A phone on the bridge of the SOMOV. Solid 1975 technology. Still ringing...
A beautiful old map showing where the Pax Arctica expedition was doing its discoveries in the past few weeks...
The Captain, Marie and Adrien watch for that lone iceberg which could create a problem...
Eventually both Alexey Molchanov and Aurore Asso dropped their life jackets to do their deep free dives in the East Siberian Sea...
Child rearing in Tiksi, at the extreme north of Yakutia, a remote province of Russia, 5-times the size of France...
Alexander (r.) and Alexei, our fearless (but very safety conscious) Mig-8 pilots: from Afghanistan to the Russian Arctic.
just old anchor's rust
Looks like there are penguins in the Arctic after all... with Bertrand Delapierre... To be researched further...
Want to know more about the Yakutian people? If you could not be on the SOMOV with the Pax Arctica expedition these past few weeks listening to anthropobiology Prof. Eric Crubezy – read his fascinating book: http://ow.ly/hVlD30fyh8j
Legendary adventure/discovery film director Bertrand Delapierre uses his walking commute in Tiksi to think about our film's title ideas...
Aurore Asso, with old skis from a Russian Arctic polar station
Setting up a Kodak fish-eye cam in the helicopter cockpit. The video imaging will be used to 3Dmodel the islands we will study
Arctic landscape in the New Siberian Islands...
Thanks to our Mi-8 and its crew, we could access spots never before visited...
De Long island discovery in the Russian Arctic, one stone at a time
No I was not outside the helicopter when I took that pix, but a long arm through the window will do the trick...
Early morning industrial junk burning in Tiksi...
The Pax Arctica Russian Arctic Expedition combined members from Russia, the USA, France and was made possible thanks to the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.