At the northern end of the populated world, whaling is not like the industrial-scale, mechanised harvesting that brought several species close to the brink of extinction in decades gone by. There, it's the peoples such as Inuit and Inupiat who catch whales for eating, and a few other uses, within their local communities.

A few years ago, Richard Black, Environmental Correspondent for the BBC News, visited Barrow in North Alaska, which is so far north that virtually nothing will grow in the ground, and ice is more common underfoot than anything approximating to soil.

He talked about whaling and the bowheads that pass the coast twice a year on their annual migration, but wasn't able to meet the community's leading lights, as they were away at the time lobbying for the right to continue their tradition.

Whaling is not quite as vital for nutrition as it once was, because now most of the 11 whaling villages do have food stores, and many people have paid jobs. But it's still clearly a major aspect of life. Not only bowhead whales but seals and fish are caught for food, with some being bartered with other indigenous groups inland in return for caribou meat.

Hunting habits have changed in recent years. Now, a fair bit of the hunting is done in November and December, as the bowhead whales return south. At this point in the year, the ice is so tough as to wreck sealskin boats, so materials such as aluminium are used instead. Technology and enhanced scrutiny over welfare issues have also changed the hunt, with modern explosive harpoons used to kill the animal as quickly as possible - ideally, instantaneously.

And here is where the real insights begin, taking you into a world with mores and values a world away from modern, Western-style existence - a marked contrast in particular with mainstream US cultures of speed and instant opportunities and individualism. Harry Brower, from one of Barrow's oldest families, and a whaling captain, explained the Inupiat belief that a whale comes ashore in human form as the boats' crews gather to discuss the coming season's hunt. If the whale/human hears anything disrespectful, they will not allow themselves to be caught - and, he added, there are some captains who have been hunting for years without ever catching a thing, the implication being that they were not respectful enough.

The crews "receive" their whales from the sea, with the captain giving a prayer of thanks immediately afterwards.

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BBC News, 13th July 2011

The vessel will be used to patrol and to provide support to the South Atlantic Territories of the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands. She will also be used as an Antarctic patrol ship and will work with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK Hydrographic Office and the British Antarctic Survey.

She will replaced HMS Endurance which suffered serious damage when she flooded in the South Atlantic in 2008 and was withdrawn from service pending a decision on her future.

Before being chartered to the Royal Navy, Polarbjorn underwent a ten-day refit in Odense, Denmark. The helipad, originally above her bridge, was repositioned over the stern. Other changes included the installation of an echo sounder survey system, an overhaul of the main engines and gearboxes and the addition of naval insignia.

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Defence Web, 13th July 2011

Environment Minister Peter Kent said in announcing the resumption of the search "We are continuing our search for an as yet undiscovered national historic site. This is the year I hope we will solve one of the great mysteries in the history of Arctic exploration."

The graves of Terror and Erebus are designated together as Canada's only national historic site with no known location, as they are considered to be integral to the country's northern history.

According to Kent the resumption of the search will be on Aug. 21, if the weather co-operates. His announcement was attended by British High Commissioner Andrew Pocock and Parks Canada officials.

"The search for these historic vessels by Parks Canada does not date from this year or the last couple of years; we've been involved since 1997," said Marc-André Bernier, Parks Canada's chief of underwater archeology. "We've been looking for these wrecks for a long time. It's really a historical quest to (find them)."

If Erebus and Terror were to be discovered this summer, it would be an achievement for archeology. "It would close one chapter of Canadian history. It would answer the questions that have existed over the centuries, the uncertainty over exactly where (Terror and Erebus) ultimately foundered and sank," Kent said.

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Ottawa Citizen, 4th July 2011

Alaska Dispatch, 1st July 2011

Telegraph, 1st July 2011

"The Rainbow Warrior III is much more than a flagship," the group's spokesman Mike Townsley told AFP ahead of the vessel being floated on Monday prior to its official launch for Greenpeace's 40th birthday in October. "It is very modern and very ecological ... It is the practical application of our values."

Costing an estimated 23 million euros ($33.4 million), 10-15 percent of Greenpeace's total annual budget, this is the first time that Greenpeace is having a Rainbow Warrior built from scratch to its own specifications.

The first Rainbow Warrior was a converted British fisheries research trawler built in 1955 acquired by Greenpeace in 1978. She was sunk by French agents in 1985 in New Zealand while attempting to stop nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Rainbow Warrior II, another former fishing vessel, is more than 50 years old and is being retired after being "rammed, raided and bombed" in numerous campaigns against nuclear testing, over-fishing and illegal logging, Greenpeace says.

"It is something very special working for Greenpeace," says the ship's chief designer Uwe Lampe, admitting to getting "a few migraines" trying to give the non-governmental organisation the ship of its dreams.

"We have constructed a boat with an unusually high number of environmental and safety standards ... We can only use parts that meet European norms and materials from Europe, so no Chinese steel or Russian plywood," he said.

"The whole concept of the boat was, how should I say, very complex," he told AFP. "It's like a small town, with its own electricity generator, air conditioning, waste water treatment and laboratory."

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AFP, 2nd July 2011

Oman Daily Observer, 4th July 2011

According to a new study by researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Auckland and other institutions; for the first time whales from a small surviving population around remote, sub-Antarctic islands have found their way back to the New Zealand mainland.

Before the animals were slaughtered for the 19th century whaling industry, historical records suggest that up to 30,000 of these impressive whales once migrated each winter to New Zealand's many sandy, well-protected bays to give birth and raise their calves.

The findings of the study were just published in Marine Ecology Progress Series.

Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at OSU who initiated a study of these whales in 1995, said "We used DNA profiling to confirm that seven whales are now migrating between the sub-Antarctic islands and mainland New Zealand. These are probably just the first pioneers," Baker said. "The protected bays of New Zealand are excellent breeding grounds, and I suspect that we may soon see a pulse of new whales following the pioneers, to colonize their former habitat. The right whale is remarkably graceful, very spectacular to watch," Baker said. "There used to be thousands of them in New Zealand and they are now re-discovering their ancestral home. It will be interesting to see what develops."

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Treehugger, 27th June 2011

Wildlife Extra, June 2011

USA Today, 27th June 2011

Bernama, 27th June 2011

Ornithologist Kurt Burnham, who made the discovery, said "I was very surprised by this finding. These birds are not moving between land masses, but actually using the ice floes or pack ice as winter habitat for extended periods of time. Previously, all species of falcon were considered to be land-based birds."

Dr Burnham of the High Arctic Institute, Illinois US and the University of Oxford, UK, together with colleague Professor Ian Newton of Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford, studied the seasonal movements of gyrfalcons (Falco rusticolus) by tagging 48 birds with radio transmitters. This allowed them to track the movements of the birds living in three areas of Greenland: Thule in the northwest, Kangerlussuaq in the west, and Scoresbysund in the east.

They found that birds living on the west coast had winter home-range sizes of between 400-6,600km square kilometres, whilst those on the east coast ranged far more widely, covering between 27,000-64,000 square kilometres.

"Others had observed gyrfalcons sitting on icebergs and over the ocean but it was always assumed they were only over the ocean for a short period to hunt and then flew back to land," explained Dr Burnham.

The research, he added, emphasises how specialised many Arctic species are, in order to survive in an extremely difficult and inhospitable environment.

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BBC Nature, 20th June 2011

A group of citizens in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, is trying to stop this from happening and want the wreck of the Maud, also known as the Baymaud, which lies partially submerged in the shallow waters near Cambridge Bay, to stay where it has been for the past eight decades.

A committee "Keep the Baymaud Committee" is fighting a Norwegian's group's efforts to take the shipwreck back to Amundsen's home country, where the explorer is a national legend.

Committee chair Vicki Aitaok said losing the Maud would be a huge loss for Cambridge Bay, since the wreck is a major tourist attraction there. "We take 300 people or more every year there," Aitaok told CBC News on Thursday.

A Norwegian group "Maud Returns Home", is backed by a development company, and says it wants to salvage the wreck and move it back to the town in Norway where Amundsen had the Maud built a century ago. "We really think that the Maud deserves a better destiny than to stay forever, falling gradually more and more apart," Jan Wanggaard, a project manager with Maud Returns Home, told CBC News earlier this week.

The vessel belongs to the people in Asker, Norway, who bought the wreck from the Hudson's Bay Company for $1 in 1990. Because the wreck of the Maud is owned by the Norwegians, it is currently not protected by laws in Nunavut, said Doug Stenton, the territorial government's director of heritage. "Our regulations do not apply to private property," Stenton said.

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Alaska Dispatch, 4th June 2011

Jacob Verhoef, a Halifax-based geoscientist and the head of the Canadian government's efforts to secure vast new stretches of seabed territory under a UN treaty on extended continental shelves, said that his team's last scheduled underwater survey for Canada's claim will be carried out jointly with U.S. researchers in August along the little-studied Alpha Ridge, a drowned mountain range more than 1,500 kilometres north of the Yukon's Arctic Ocean coast.

"That would be the end of the field work," said Verhoef, noting that this year's research should give Canada "sufficient scientific data" to finalize its claim — but adding the caveat that unpredictable weather in the Arctic always requires having a "Plan B" in case things go wrong. "If we don't get the exact information this summer for reasons of ice conditions or equipment failure or whatever, then we have the option to go back in 2012," he said.

"Things have gone pretty well. We have collected more or less the amount of data that we had planned," Verhoef added. "We were always hoping that if nothing went wrong we would finish by 2011 and then have two years to analyze and review and write everything up."

Collaborative expeditions were conducted with scientists from the U.S. and Denmark, both of which are also competing with Canad, for undersea land grabs in northern waters. Verhoef said of the research partnerships "It's been very important," noting that "we probably could have done it on our own" but that working with Denmark and the U.S. have probably yielded more geographical coverage in survey work and higher-quality information for all three countries' eventual UN submissions.

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Vancouver Sun, 30th May 2011 

The Arctic reflect around 90 per cent of the UV light that hits them; snow-free land typically reflects only a few per cent. Glen Jeffery, of University College London, and his colleagues wondered whether reindeers had adapted to their UV-rich world of the frozen wastes of the Arctic. 

In dark conditions, they shone LED lights of different wavelengths, including UV, into the eyes of 18 anaesthetised reindeers while recording with an electrode whether nerves in the eye fired, indicating that the light had been seen. The UV light triggered a response in the eyes of all the reindeer.

Why did the reindeers adapt ? The experiments with a UV camera in the Arctic showed that urine, a sign of predators or potential mates, and lichens, a major food source for reindeers in the winter months, absorb UV light, making them appear black in contrast to the UV-reflecting snow.

"Very few mammals see UV light. Rodents do and some species of bat do but we have no idea why they have developed this capability," says Jeffery. "This is the first time we have got a real handle on why a mammal uses UV light."

The eyes of most mammals cannot cope with UV light because it carries enough energy to destroy their sensitive photoreceptors, permanently damaging vision. "Why don't reindeer, arctic fox, polar bears or arctic seals get snow blindness?" asks Jeffery. "Arctic mammals must have a completely different mechanism for protecting their retinas."

Jeffery and his team plan to return to the Arctic later in the year. "If we could work out what this protective mechanism is perhaps we could learn from it and develop new strategies to prevent or treat the damage UV can cause to humans," he says.

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NewScientist, 27th May 2011

Alaska Dispatch, 28th May 2011