Reclaiming Russia's position as Antarctica's leading explorer.

Nearly two centuries after discovering Antarctica’s frigid frontiers, Russia is hoping its oil-forged riches can help it reclaim its position as the southern continent’s leading explorer.

Summer hits the Antarctic when Russia is just getting its first frosts and snow.

Each year, in early November, the Russian expedition to Antarctica departs from St. Petersburg. This season, the expedition’s flagship, the Akademik Fyodorov (above), set sail on November 3. Along with the research vessel Akademik Karpinsky, it will serve the 230 staff of the 52nd expedition, returning home on April 28.

This year’s trip is special, but it is not simply because 2007 is International Polar Year. It is because, said Valery Lukin, head of the expedition and deputy director of the St. Petersburg-based Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, for the first time in a decade, Russian researchers are working under what they call “optimal parameters.” It means they can afford to do what they need and want to do. The Antarctic expedition, along with other Russian research programs, has become a somewhat unexpected beneficiary of the country’s massive oil profits.

Last year, the government budgeted R550 million ($21 million) for this season’s expedition – up from R387 million in 2005. And funding for construction and equipment purchases jumped more than three-fold, from R40 to R140 million. 

Russia’s Antarctic expedition is now the sixth best-funded program, after the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, Germany and Australia, Lukin said. 

The Russian government is also sponsoring construction of a new research vessel for Antarctica. It will cost R2.4 billion ($92 million) and should be completed by 2010. 

Yet the expedition’s resources are still much tighter than in Soviet times – the program’s heyday. The Antarctic expedition currently operates just two ships, for example, compared with seven in the 1980s.

The Soviet Union launched its first Antarctic expedition 51 years ago, in 1955. But when the USSR collapsed in 1991, funding quickly dried up and the staff dwindled. 

“But despite the difficult times, the Russian Antarctic expedition hasn’t stopped its operations for a single day,” Lukin said. “Although it was indeed very difficult. Financing declined drastically, like elsewhere in our lives in those days.” 

But now, after a long dry spell, the annual expedition is expanding it operations and reopening closed Soviet-era stations. Next season, Leningradskaya and Russkaya stations will reopen as summer bases, adding to the five year-round stations and four seasonal bases the expedition currently operates. 

Exploring Antarctica

Russia did not abandon its activities in the Antarctic during the 1990s because a presence on the southernmost continent, like a space program, confers a certain prestige that a superpower cannot afford to lose. With stations scattered all across Antarctica – other countries tend to settle within their “claimed territory” – Russia professes a special relationship with the frozen continent. And it also prides itself on being its discoverer.

In 1819, Tsar Alexander I dispatched an expedition to the southern polar region, led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, a Russian naval officer of German descent. The expedition’s two ships – the 600-ton corvette Vostok and the 530-ton support-vessel Mirny, – crossed the Antarctic Circle on January 26, 1820 (New Style), and approached the Antarctic mainland two days later. “We saw solid ice stretching in the South from east to west,” Bellingshausen wrote in his report to the Russian Naval Ministry. “Our way led right into this ice field covered with hills.” During the trip, Vostok and Mirny approached Antarctica nine times. The expedition also discovered numerous islands in the Antarctic waters, including Shishkov, Mordvinov and Peter I.

Russian research and exploration of Antarctica continued throughout the 19th century but slowed during the first half of the 20th century, as the nation busied itself with problems closer to home, not least of which were wars, revolution and famine. But interest in the continent continued: in 1932-1933 – the Second International Polar Year – researchers drafted plans for an Antarctic station, but they never came to fruition.

Nonetheless, as other countries trekked south to claim their own chunks of glacial land, the Soviet Union sought to guard its Antarctic interests, if from a safe distance. Seven countries – Great Britain, Argentina, Chile, Norway, France, Australia and New Zealand – made territorial claims on the Antarctic between 1904 and 1953. The Soviet Foreign Ministry protested Norway’s claims in a 1938 note and suggested that Antarctica should belong to the world and not be possessed by any specific nation. But in 1950 the Soviet Union changed tack and declared that, as the continent’s discoverer, it reserved the right to claim the whole of Antarctica as its own. 

Yet in the post-War era, verbal claims were not enough. Only countries that had a physical presence could secure their position in Antarctica. “We needed to create permanent settlements in Antarctica,” Lukin said. “And what can one build in the Antarctic? Research stations.” Yet while other countries mainly established stations within their claimed territories, the Soviet Union deliberately placed its bases all over the continent. “Initially,” Lukin said, “the task was purely political.”

The first Soviet Antarctic expedition set off from Kaliningrad on November 30, 1955, aboard the research vessel Ob and accompanied by two other ships. Setting up the first Soviet base – Mirny – was the primary task for the 127 staff, led by Mikhail Somov. 

Four years later, diplomacy froze out the staking of territorial claims. In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty (signed by 12 countries originally; to date 45 nations are signatories) set the continent aside as a scientific preserve.

Yet Soviet activity continued. In subsequent years, additional stations were established and Soviet scientists studied the region’s geography and natural phenomena, such as the southern lights, geomagnetic disturbances and ice thickness. But before they began really conducting research in earnest, the explorers had to first get a lay of the land. “The first stage was reconnaissance,” Lukin said. “Nobody knew anything at that time.” And just as happened during Russia’s first foray to Antarctica 140 years before, new discoveries meant that many Russian names were permanently fixed on the Antarctic map. Extensive exploration also allowed the Soviet Union to publish a two-volume atlas of Antarctica between 1966 and 1969. 

Soviet and world interest in Antarctica peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, as the continent’s vast resource potential, especially in fishing and minerals, became apparent. This fed hydro-meteorological and biological research. Mineral surveying required aviation, so Soviet Union developed long enough snow and ice runways at Novolazarevskaya and Molodyozhnaya stations to handle transcontinental flights. 

In its heyday in the 1980s, the Soviet Antarctic expedition had 300 wintering staff and a fleet of seven ships. The country had regular direct flights to Antarctica (using IL-18 and IL-76 TD planes) until 1991. But when the Soviet Union splintered, the country found itself, just as earlier in the century, too busy with its own problems to indulge its Antarctic ambitions. 

Lake Vostok

With the return of these ambitions, there is a growing controversy over drilling to Lake Vostok – the largest of 46 research projects planned for this year’s expedition.

Lake Vostok is the crown jewel of Antarctica’s sub-glacial lakes. The largest of over a hundred such lakes, Vostok has a surface area of 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles, or almost the same size as Lake Ontario) and is hidden under four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice beneath Russia’s Vostok station.

Researchers think the lake has been locked under the ice for over 10 million years, and that breaking into its waters could provide a wealth of information about Antarctica’s and our planet’s past. What is more, if living organisms are found in the lake’s dark and near-freezing waters, this might be another argument that life is possible beyond Earth.

So Russian researchers are drilling into Lake Vostok for a peek at our distant past. Yet some critics worry that Russian technology may not be clean enough to sample the lake’s pristine waters. Drilling began in the 1970s, but was halted in 1996 – at a depth of 3623 meters – when the Scientific Commission on Antarctic Research expressed worries about possible contamination of the lake. 

Russian researchers resumed drilling on Lake Vostok last year after an extensive review of their technology. By January 2006, just 100 meters remained between the drill and the lake. This year, the plan is to stop just 25 meters short of the lake’s surface and poke through in late 2007. Lukin said the Russian expedition will present the necessary environmental evaluation at the May 2007 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in New Delhi, in order that the team can complete the program on time.

Some Western researchers, however, still have concerns about the Russian team’s technology, which uses a mix of kerosene and Freon to fill the borehole. These chemicals, they feel, could contaminate the lake’s ecosystem – erasing the valuable information scientists seek. Lukin maintains that the technology is clean, since the kerosene and Freon soup does not mix with water. So, Lukin said, when the lake surface is reached, the Vostok’s waters will flood into the borehole and freeze, allowing researchers to take out an ice core sample. Lukin said that the experience of Danish researchers in Greenland in 2004 and German scientists in the Queen Maud’s Land in the Antarctic in January 2006 proved the viability of his team’s method.

Even so, the kerosene-Freon fluid could mix with the waters of Vostok, resulting in contamination, since the lake could connect to other sub-glacial water bodies, argued Martin Siegert of the Bristol Glaciology Center, in the April 2006 issue of Nature. In this case, rapid exchange of water between the sub-glacial lakes could cause mixing and contamination. Lukin said that Siegert’s fears are groundless, since Russian radar studies of Vostok have shown no connection with other sub-glacial lakes.

Lukin said that attacks on the project may be motivated largely by politics and money. None of Antarctica’s sub-glacial lakes have been directly sampled, and there are several other projects underway. But Vostok is the most advanced and the most ambitious. So, Lukin said, Western scientists fear that after the Russians unlock Vostok, funding for similar projects will be cut drastically. 

“The situation is very similar to the project of the first manned flight to the moon, when two superpowers – the USSR and the U.S. – were competing,” Lukin said. “The Americans won that competition. But this time success will likely go to the Russian side. Nobody likes losing. I understand this. And everyone wants to delay their defeat.” RL