Take the Northwest Passage, to which the newly proclaimed Canadian port of Nanisivik marks the eastern entrance.
The Northwest Passage, a shortcut to Asia, proved elusive until about 100 years ago, when Norway's Roald Amundsen completed a three-year journey.
It will, however, be put to the test this summer when a team attempts to cross the Northwest Passage with it in tow.
Two weeks later, it was announced that the fabled Northwest Passage was navigable for the first time in recorded history, facilitating the new oil frontier.
What connects Queen Victoria, the Northwest Passage and Barack Obama?
In 2000, with a decidedly smaller, modern craft an aluminum catamaran it took Delgado's team just six weeks to go through the Northwest Passage.
's ill-fated 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage: a British voyage that set out to establish a sailing route through the Arctic and ended with the untimely, mysterious deaths of its two ship crews.
ENGADGET: University of Victoria's Mano underwater robot to prowl Arctic waters for legendary ships
The Arctic's importance has gained extra strategic and economic significance as melting ice in the polar region strengthens the feasibility of nations to use the Northern Sea Route (NSR) across the top of Russia and the Northwest Passage through Canada's Arctic archipelago.
In fact, PANGAEA had just arrived in Annapolis after completing a traverse of the Northwest Passage from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, and is on her way to Florida to explore the Everglades before an expedition next year far up the Amazon River.
At a time when discrimination against aboriginal peoples was common, Amundsen was a devoted student of the lessons of the Netsilik Eskimos, who lived in the Canadian arctic, and with whom Amundsen had spent substantial time studying their diets, their clothes, and their survival skills, while on the first successful expedition to discover and traverse the Northwest Passage.
At the moment, this route through the Canadian archipelago is navigable at best for a brief summer spell. (Sovereignty over the passage is one of the Arctic's many unresolved issues: Canada claims it, but the United States says the waters are international.) In theory, a complete opening of the Northwest Passage can shave 2, 500 miles off a journey from Europe to Asia.
They say that the federal Fish Passage Center, created by the Northwest Power Planning Council to monitor fish counts and water flows on the Columbia and Snake, has documented a direct correlation between higher flows and salmon survival.
应用推荐