Arctic Ocean

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Ocean surrounding the North Pole; area 14,000,000 sq km/5,405,400 sq mi. Because of the Siberian and North American rivers flowing into it, it has comparatively low salinity and freezes readily.

The ocean comprises:

Beaufort Sea off Canada/Alaska coast, named after British admiral Francis Beaufort; oil drilling allowed only in winter because the sea is the breeding and migration route of the bowhead whales, staple diet of the local Inuit people;

Greenland Sea between Greenland and Svalbard;

Norwegian Sea between Greenland and Norway, which belongs physiographically to the same basin as the Atlantic Ocean;

From west to east along the north coast of Russia:

Barents Sea named after Willem Barents, which has oil and gas reserves and was strategically significant as the meeting point of the NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. The White Sea (Beloye More) is its southernmost gulf;

Kara Sea (Kavaskoye More) renowned for bad weather and called the ‘great ice cellar’;

Laptev Sea between Taimyr Peninsula and New Siberian Island;

East Siberian Sea and Chukchi Sea (Cukotskoje More) between Russia and the USA; the semi-nomadic Chukchi people of Northeast Siberia finally accepted Soviet rule in the 1930s.

The Arctic Ocean has the world's greatest concentration of nuclear submarines, but at the same time there is much scientific cooperation on exploration, especially since Russia needs Western aid to develop oil and gas in its areas.

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