Major Russian Research In Antarctic This Year

Press, Volume C, Issue 29680, 25 November 1961, Page 12

Major Russian Research In Antarctic This Year

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Nov. 24. Two supply ships would carry a major scientific party of about 300 men and 3000 tons of supplies for an increased Russian research effort in the Antarctic this year, the Attache and Antarctic liaison officer of the Russian Legation (Mr L. V. Shcherbakov) said today. This year a big party of research scientists will join six Russian expeditions in the Antarctic. They will sail shortly in the Ob from Leningrad, according to the newspaper “Isvestia.” The head of the expeditions is the well-known Russian polar explorer, Mr Alexandre Dralkin, who has been on both South and North Poles. Members of this seventh expedition will continue scientific research which the earlier expeditions have started tn the central areas of the eastern Antarctic, on the coast of the Antarctic and in the waters surrounding it, the newspaper says. Tractors towing sledge trains, and expedition aircraft will take the scientists to places in the continent as yet untrodden by man. A big job will be done in ice-free mountains in the eastern Antarctic continent by geologists under Dr. Lev Klimov, a polar scientistexplorer. One of the main tasks of the expeditions will be complex scientific research. There is also a great deal to be done on the coastline of the eastern Antarctic. One job will be a complex research project in Enderby Land. The big deeps in the Indian Ocean will also be probed by oceanographers under Vladimir Shamontev, who was earlier a chief on a north polar station. In this expedition, as in others, Soviet scientists will snare their information and finds in the traditions of Antarctic co-operation with scientists of Australia. Britain, New Zealand, the United States, France, and other countries. With the Soviet scientists will be working scientists

from Czechoslovakia and East Germany. At the major Soviet station in the south, Mirny, an American scientist, Mr Matthew Pryor, will work with the Russians. He will be the fifth American to work at the base. On the other hand, a Russian scientist will work with the Americans in their sector of the Antarctic following the established practice of previous years.