Wildlife observations recorded at several offshore hydrocarbon exploration sites in the Beaufort Sea were examined to evaluate the hypothesis that polar bears Ursus maritimus are attracted to drill rigs, will be judged to represent a threat to humans there, and consequently will have to be deterred or destroyed. When polar bears came south with the pack ice in the autumn, they approached drillships or artificial islands, probably because they became curious or were attracted by unfamiliar smells. However, these bears did not usually remain in the area.

In late winter, when most of the natural leads are frozen, the movement of compacted annual ice from east to west past permanent offshore drill rigs creates open cracks on the downstream side. Because of the open water there, seals are more abundant, more accessible, or both, and bears are attracted because of better hunting conditions. In mid to late winter some bears may remain in the area for several days or longer while hunting seals. This positive reinforcement may lead these bears to be attracted to other offshore rigs in the future. In the last five years four bears attracted to offshore rigs have been shot; thus the hypothesis was found to be valid. To date, the population is not under threat, but this could change if the number of offshore drill rigs operating through the winter were to increase.

After a brief outline of how mirages are formed in polar regions, this paper discusses several kinds of mirages noted in the literature of polar exploration—those creating illusory land, the Novaya Zemlya effect, longrange visibility and magnification, and multiple images and the Fata Morgana.

When the United States dispatched icebreakers to Proliv Vil'kitskogo [Vil'kitskii Strait] in 1967, the Soviet Union did not allow the vessels to accomplish the passage, basing their refusal on a requirement, provided for in municipal legislation, that warships seek prior authorization. During the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (1973–82) the USSR reversed this policy: innocent passage was granted in principle to merchant and war vessels alike. This article analyzes whether this fundamental policy change, together with some other novelties in Soviet legislation, substantially influenced the regime applicable to Vil'kitskii Strait. Theoretical considerations would apparently answer this question positively. Actual state practice, though still open to conjecture, points rather in the opposite direction.

A comprehensive visual and photographic record of a wide variety of auroral events was made from Spitsbergen during a prolonged period of clear weather that coincided with a remarkable resurgence in solar activity close to sunspot minimum. Using colour and interference-filter photography, the nature of the different auroral types was established and tentatively correlated with major flare events on the sun. At least three outstanding auroral substorms and three diffuse polar cap glows were generated by four large solar flares in the first half of February 1986. Many discrete polar cap aurorae were also observed in the same period.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries British medical missionary Wilfred Grenfell created a mission in northern Newfoundland and Labrador, now part of eastern Canada. The Grenfell Mission's approach to health, educational, agricultural and industrial development are described and its impact on the southeastern Labrador region is examined. The mission changed the region's settlement pattern and economy by creating centralized mission communities: however, its failure to generate sustained economic alternatives to fishing and trapping inadvertently paved the way for the economic dependency still characteristic of the region. The Grenfell case confirms the need for viable development scenarios and for meaningful local participation in community development.

On 4 August 1948, in Godthåb/Nuuk, Greenland, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Denmark's modern Arctic policy was founded. The political initiator was Hans Hedtoft, the Danish Prime Minister. The centre of Denmark's Arctic policy is Greenland, but our policy is not a Greenland policy only. Arctic policies are about people and nature, about resources and security, about high technology and traditional Arctic patterns of life. In a high degree they are a matter of cooperation between the local population and the state authorities. All these elements were present when the Danish Prime Minister presented his modern Arctic policy in August 1948.

Of 52 Antarctic sites and monuments of historic interest currently listed under Antarctic Treaty recommendations, 26 occur in the Ross Dependency, associated mostly with the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton. Many have recently been visited and a number of further sites, including several dating from Byrd expeditions, have been identified by New Zealand field parties. This article catalogues all Ross Dependency sites recorded to the end of 1987, and the current state of preservation of their artefacts, which are in the care of Antarctic Division, New Zealand DSIR.

The enhanced international significance of Antarctica during the 1980s is shown by a proliferation of studies analysing current and future possibilities. The year 1987 proved no exception to this trend; reports issued under the auspices of the European Parliament, the United Nations and the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Affairs reinforced the impression that Antarctica has become a continent surrounded by advice, even if it proves difficult to evaluate how far such reports will influence the policy-makers. Conservation proved a common feature, while the reports, discussed in this article, raise interesting questions about the future of the Antarctic Treaty system.

During surveys conducted 2–20 April 1986 in Gerlache Strait, Antarctic Peninsula, 103 humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae and eight right whales Eubalaena australis were sighted. The right whale sightings extend the southern limit of known distribution for the species. Humpback and right whale densities were respectively 0.22 (sd 0.23) and 0.01 (sd 0.06) whales per survey mile. Highest densities for both species were recorded inside bays, rather than in the relatively open water of Gerlache Strait. Both species were feeding on Antarctic krill Euphausia superba. Twenty-three humpback and four right whales were identified individually using photographs of natural features. Also included are sighting records of 18 southern bottlenose whales Hyperoodon planifrons.

In Alaska, development interests are pitted against conservationists on the question of whether the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge shall be opened to oil exploration. The area in question lies close to Prudhoe Bay's enormous reserves of petroleum and natural gas. It is also the primary calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd of some 180,000 animals, and the public debate centres on how this herd, that migrates between Alaska and Canada, would be affected. The decision on opening the Arctic coastal plain to development will rest with the US Congress.

The UN Secretary-General's third Report of September 1987 provided the background for the fifth annual round of the UN's consideration of the ‘Question of Antarctica’. The First Committee's discussions in November 1987 resulted in the adoption by large majorities of two further UN resolutions in favour of a moratorium on the Antarctic minerals regime negotiations, an enhanced UN role in the operations of the Antarctic Treaty System, and the exclusion of South Africa from Consultative Meetings. On the surface, the session might be dismissed as yet another ‘sterile annual UN ritual’, serving to confirm the international community's lack of consensus about the future management of Antarctica. In reality, the episode, suggesting that the UN/Antarctic relationship may be at the crossroads, offered several points of interest, including increased signs of strain within the Antarctic Treaty System consequent upon the South African issue, and a greater appreciation by the critics of the need to work for change within the framework of the existing Antarctic Treaty regime.

Archaeological investigations formed part of the conservation work of Project Blizzard in 1985–86 at the site of Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14) huts, Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay. The extent and nature of the archaeological resources are described, and the results of excavations inside the main hut in 1985 are summarized. Excavation stratigraphy is interpreted in the light of the documented post-abandonment history of the site, and used to measure the extent to which human activity inside the hut may be contributing to its deterioration.

The schooner Polar Bear is best known for whaling and trading voyages in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas 1911–15, and as one of the vessels of Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition 1915–18. This article summarizes her later career. In 1920 she ran aground in the Kolyma Delta and was abandoned. Refloated by a Soviet captain and crew in 1925 she was used to haul much-needed supplies from a cache near Chaunskaya Guba to Nizhnekolymsk. Renamed Polyarnaya Zvezda, in 1926 she made the first coastwise voyage of modern times from the Kolyma to the Lena, inaugurating a regular sea link with the Lena basin. In 1927 she carried building materials for a scientific station from Tiksi at the mouth of the Lena to Mys Shalaurova on Ostrov Bol'shoy Lyakhovskiy. After wintering at Yakutsk, in summer 1928 she towed a barge laden with supplies for the station down river to Tiksi and carried supplies and personnel to the station to Mys Shalaurova. The station is still in operation, an integral component of the network of support facilities which enables the Northern Sea Route to function. In 1929 the schooner was reported unfit for further duties; her subsequent fate is unknown.

Windward, a three-masted barque, was built in Peterhead in 1860 for the whaling trade, and fitted with steam engines in 1866. Almost every year for 33 years she visited the Arctic in pursuit of whales and seals, latterly belonging to the Grays, an outstanding Peterhead whaling family. Sold in 1894 to Captain Joseph Wiggins, she was bought later in the same year by Alfred Harmsworth for the use of Frederick G. Jackson in his exploration of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa (Franz Josef Land). Windward was Jackson's ship for three years, including one winter beset in the ice; journeying from her, Jackson substantially recharted Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, and the ship brought home Fridtjof Nansen after his epic drift with the polar ice. In 1897 Harmsworth offered the vessel to Robert Peary, who was planning an assault on the North Pole from the northern tip of Greenland or from Ellesmere Island. After four years with Peary, including two winters trapped in the ice, Windward returned to her roots in whaling from Scotland. She was lost in Davis Strait in 1907.

Dental models of 649 Canadian Inuit from Hall Beach and Igloolik, and both models and skull dentitions of 782 Greenland Inuit (323 from the east coast, 459 from the west coast), were examined for (a) presence or absence of four specific morphological variants considered by various authors to indicate racial affinities (shovel-shaped incisors, cusp of Carabelli, Eskimo tubercle and protostylid on molars and premolars), and (b) amount of wear. Dental models of contemporary British and British-Asian subjects were studied for comparison. Both living and skeletal Greenland material was from people known to have followed a traditional Inuit lifestyle, with little or no contact with the Western world. Canadian material was from a population in transition between traditional and Western ways of life, eating both native and Western foods. Morphological variation was considered in the context of genetic affinities of the populations to each other and to other groups of Central Asian origin. Tooth wear was examined in relation to diet, lifestyle and health.

Reindeer and caribou, respectively Old World and New World forms of Rangifer tarandus, live in large groups in the boreal forest and on the Arctic tundra. Many stocks of reindeer are herded by pastoralists. This article reviews the ecology, breeding biology and herding behaviour of both forms, as revealed by recent field studies. It identifies breeding synchrony, dominance and leadership as important aspects of their social organization, mediated by a system of signals that keep the herds together, and discusses the significance of pastoral practices that maintain herd organization and make reindeer herding possible.

The final phase of operation of the US National Science Foundation research vessel, USNS Eltanin, was under the terms of an agreement between agencies of the governments of the US and the Republic of Argentina. Renamed ARA Islas Orcadas and operated by the Argentine Naval Hydrographic Service, the ship collected more than 2100 m of sediment cores and other specimens from the South Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean over a five-year period. These materials were shipped to Florida State University for processing and description, and from them have been distributed more than 27,000 samples to investigators worldwide. This article incorporates a bibliography covering all publications we have identified referring to results of analyses or other research based on samples from sediments collected by the Islas Orcadas programme.

In 1905 Nathalie Fairbank left Seattle on a journey by sea, train and river across Yukon Territory and Alaska, accompanying Brigadier A. W. Greely and his daughter on a tour of inspection of US Army Signal Corps telegraph posts along the Yukon River. This article is her account of the journey, with contemporary illustrations.

In a botanical field survey of Ile de Croy, Iles Kerguelen, from 17 November to 14 December 1984, 14 of the 29 species of vascular plants known from the archipelago were recorded. None of the eight Kerguelen species of pteridophytes and no introduced species were present. Four major natural plant associations were identified. Notes are given on the habitats, distribution and ecology of each species, and comparisons are made with mainland Kerguelen and neighbouring subantarctic islands. The significance for conservation of this relatively undisturbed island is discussed.