The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has relied on sledge dogs as the main form of transport for field parties since its predecessor, the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), imported them in 1945, when it created a permanent presence on the continent. Over the years dogs have been used for extensive work over a very wide area. In 1975 BAS changed its policy with respect to work in the southern Antarctic Peninsula. In future seasons scientists will not winter in this area but will be flown to Adelaide Island and then into the field. They will carry out more detailed scientific work in particular areas of interest. This means that it is no longer practical to maintain huskies on base as they could not be kept fit and well disciplined during the winter for a short summer season. The scientists, similarly, could not be expected to learn to work the dogs efficiently in the time available, and the change in the nature of their work means that they will not move camp so frequently. The dogs, since they must be fed even if they are resting, would be uneconomic in such a situation. Finally, most of the work will be in areas that are thought to be safe so the dogs will not be needed to probe for crevasses. In future seasons BAS will rely on skidoos for field work (Figs 1 and 2).

The United States Coast Guard's involvement in the polar regions and, eventually, with polar icebreakers, reaches back to 1867, when Alaska was purchased from the Soviet Union. That same year the US Revenue Cutter Service, as the US Coast Guard was then known, despatched the Lincoln north to make the first official exploration of the new territory. Out of this voyage was born the Service's close association with the polar regions which continues today (Evans, 1949).

Waders are among the most characteristic birds breeding in Arctic regions. The group includes species such as the Knot Calidris canutus and Turnstone Arenaria interpres whose breeding distribution spreads to the. most northerly points of land in the world, along the shores of Greenland and Ellesmere Island bordering the Arctic Ocean. To succeed, these species must be highly adapted to their environment, able to fit all the events of the nesting season—territorial procurement, laying, incubation and hatching of eggs, and raising of young—into the short Arctic summer, able to withstand extremes of weather and fluctuations in food supply, and to avoid the attentions of mammalian and avian predators. To exploit their Arctic niche, these birds make long and spectacular migrations from a wintering area where climate and food supply are suitable for subsistence but not for reproduction. Owing to the remoteness of the Arctic breeding areas, details of the migrations of these species have remained obscure or undocumented until relatively recently. This article describes the development of research on wader migration in Britain and the research expeditions which have taken place since 1970 to various Arctic, sub-Arctic (and sub-tropical) areas, and which together have clarified or solved many aspects of the migration of species wintering in Europe. Some of the features of the migration of the Knot are discussed in particular, as a representative species of the group.

It has long been supposed that repeated exposure of a man to cold conditions might be expected to produce changes within him which would better enable him to stand up to those cold conditionsto acclimatize to cold. Until recently, however, there has been little and conflicting evidence of the mechanism of such changes. Accounts of the polar explorers of the Scott-Amundsen era reveal that these men were exposed to severe cold stresses, but unfortunately the sophisticated research facilities necessary to measure the various factors involved were not then available. Now that these facilities are available, man conducts his polar activities under far more comfortable conditions, and the degree of cold stress to which he is exposed is probably of a much smaller order. Small wonder, then, that research into the elusive phenomenon of acclimatization to cold has yielded little profit. In fact, the available evidence suggests that the polar traveller may well undergo a marked heat stress as a result of strenuous exercise under conditions in which he is unable to get rid of surplus heat easily. This article looks at the basic physiological problems of heat loss and heat conservation with which the modern polar traveller has to contend, and points out the results of some recent investigations.

Since 1965 South Africa- has conducted a biological research programme on its two sub-Antarctic islands, Marion and Prince Edward. This programme is organized under the auspices of the South African Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SASCAR) and is sponsored by the South African Department of Transport. The first South African scientific expedition to the islands in 1965–66 yielded much information on the geology, zoology and botany of the two islands (van Zinderen Bakker Sr and others, 1971). The programme has since developed into a sophisticated ecological/physiological study, having as its major objective an understanding of the food cycles operative within the islands' ecosystems. The realization of this objective involves detailed investigations into the primary and secondary production of the various components of the islands' biota as well as a quantitative inquiry into the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients operative within the terrestrial, fresh and salt-water environs of the islands.

An ice shelf is a floating ice sheet, attached to land where ice is grounded along the coastline. Nourished both by surface snow accumulation and by glaciers and ice sheets flowing off the land, ice shelves can reach a considerable thickness, varying from up to 1 300 m when the ice starts to float to 200 m or less at the seaward edge (known as the ice front). Nearly all the world's ice shelves are found in Antarctica, where they cover an area of about one and a half million square kilometres. The two largest are the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf, each with an area of about half a million square kilometres. Smaller ice shelves fringe other parts of the Antarctic coastline.

In October 1976 HM nuclear submarine Sovereign was sent into the Arctic Ocean on a voyage to the North Pole. This was the second Royal Naval submarine deployment in the Arctic Ocean, the first being the voyage of the Dreadnought in 1971. Sovereign was accompanied by HM submarine Narwhal as far as 80°N, and within the Arctic Basin the submarine's track was flown over by a Canadian Argus maritime patrol aircraft. The Scott Polar Research Institute carried out a scientific programme from both vessels, with Dr P. Wadhams aboard Sovereign and V. A. Squire aboard Narwhal.

Native languages in northern Canada are under great pressure. Even in the remote settlements of the central and eastern Arctic schooling is primarily in English; Eskimo or Indian languages tend to be regarded as special items of culture that warrant a half-day per week in a ‘cultural inclusion’ programme, along with story-telling and traditional crafts. Even this ‘inclusion’ is a result of recent reforms in curriculum development: in the 1950's and '60's there were schools where the use of native language was simply forbidden. This pressure from within the educational system is compounded by demands from employers in the industrial sector: functional English has sometimes been a condition of being hired, and native languages are generally given minimum usefulness or status at the work-place.

The Harp Seal Pagophilus groenlandicus is a gregarious, migratory seal inhabiting Arctic and sub-Arctic waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. In spring, asthe ice recedes, the largest of three known breeding populations migrates up the east coas of Canada from the Gulf of St Lawrence, along the coast of Labrador, to the Canadian Archipelago, Hudson Bay, and the west coast of Greenland. After spending the summer feeding in Arctic waters, the seals move southward ahead of the Arctic ice pack, reaching the coast of Labrador and the Gulf of St Lawrence sometime in late December or early January. They reappear at the end of February and in early March in whelping ‘patches’ or concentrations on ice inthe Gulf of St Lawrence west of the Magdalen Islands, and off the coast of Labrador in an areaknown as the ‘Front’. One of the two smaller and probably distinct breeding populations is to be found in the White Sea, the other in the Vestisen [West Ice] between Jan Mayen and Svalbard.

Today the north is no longer remote and insulated from the demands of modern society, and northern Quebec is no exception. Principal threats to the environment come from mining, pipeline construction and hydro-electric developments. In the negotiations that are going on today between the native peoples, who are trying to protect what is left of their culture, and the developers from the south, there is a large divergence of opinion about what is important. When the native peoples are asked to document their use of natural resources in the courts they find themselves at a great disadvantage due to the lack of written history about their activities. The value of renewable natural resources that have sustained indigenous populations for thousands of years is difficult to quantify and can easily be made to look insignificant in comparison to the often exaggerated benefits of development proposals. For this reason it is important to make available whatever factual information there is and to present it in an unbiased manner.

Bernhard Hantzsch was a German zoologist and explorer, born in 1875, whose first work in Canada was in northernmost Labrador in 1906. He returned to the north in 1909 with the object of exploring the then unknown Foxe Basin coast of Baffin Island. His plan was to set off from Cumberland Sound and travel with Eskimos across Baffin Island by way of Nettilling Lake and the Koukdjuak River, follow the coast north and west to Fury and Hecla Strait, and then make his way to Pond Inlet. Unfortunately, the ship that was taking him to Kerketen sank in Cumberland Sound; although all aboard made their way safely to Blacklead Island, most of his supplies were lost. Nevertheless he set off, ill-equipped, in the spring of 1910 with a group of Eskimos. By the end of the year he had established winter quarters at the mouth of what is now 245 Sylvan called the Hantzsch River, with two families, Aggakdjuk, his wife Arnga and their children, and Ittusakdjuak and his wife Sirkinirk.

This paper examines an example of the functioning of what is referred to in the Soviet literature as the shift method (vakhtennyy metod) of working mineral resources in remote northern locations. The essence of the method is that the workers have their homes and families at some established centre in the south, and are flown in to their place of work in the north for shifts of a few weeks, during which long hours are worked. Thus at the northern end living accommodation can be very simple, with no need for elaborate social facilities, and substantial economies should accrue. These economies would more than offset the cost of transportation, and would become apparent if account were taken of the indirect as well as the direct costs of the enterprise—that is, the associated towns, highways, airports, power stations and so forth.

Seven British Antarctic Survey stations were operational during the year. However, in March 19755 Stonington Island was closed after 21 years of occupation. A number of senior Survey staff visited the bases this season, including Dr R. J. Adie (Deputy Director), Dr C. Swithinbank (Head of Earth Sciences), Mr W. N. Bonner (Head of Life Sciences), Dr J. Dudeney (Leader of the Ionospherics Section), and Mr W. Sloman (Head of Administration).

On 26 June 1976 a party of eight embarked MV Blenheim at Newcastle on the first stage of the expedition's journey to Svartisen. Situated on the Arctic Circle, north of the steel town of Mo-I-Rana, Svartisen is a plateau ice cap roughly 24 km in diameter. A deep valley, Glomdalen, running north-east to south-west splits the ice cap into two halves. Surveys made over the past 100 years have indicated that an extensive and almost continuous retreat of the ice limit has taken place.

The total breeding population of the Thick-billed Murre (Brünnich's Guillemot)Uria lomvia in west Greenland in 1951 was estimated to amount to two million pairs (Salomonsen, 1951), half of which inhabit the gigantic loomery at Kap Shackleton (Agparssuit) (Fig 1). Tuck (1960) considered this to be a conservative estimate, ‘and cannot concede that fewer than five million Thick-billed Murres inhabit the west coast of Greenland during the summer months’. The birds have long been considered an important food source by the inhabitants of the area. Rink (in Salomonsen, 1951, p 378) recorded a harvest of 70 000 birds as long ago as 1850; with the advent of modern shotguns and cheap ammunition the toll is now severe (Fig 2). As a result of shooting and disturbance population decreases have been recorded at various sites, but particularly those close to settlements (Table 1). In addition to the colonies listed in the table, a count was made in 1921 for the Sagdleq colony in the Umánaq district. An estimated 500 000 birds were recorded which, in 1949, had decreased to 250 000. In 1968 the Umánaq district legislated for total preservation of this colony for three years.

This brief report describes the first year of a joint Cambridge University—Iceland University two-year project to develop radio echo depth-sounding apparatus suitable for the temperate ice of the Vatnajökull ice cap. There is much interest in obtaining detailed ice thickness measurements for the 8 400 km2 Vatnajökull area, where only limited ice-depth surveys, using bore-hole and seismxic techniques, have been carried out in the past. A line of volcanic and geothermal activity extends through the western regions of the ice and creates a sub-glacial lake, Grimsvotn, which collapses every five years or so giving rise to the jökulhlaups, a catastrophic flooding which affects considerable areas of the Icelandic coast to the south of Vatnajökull. Proper understanding of the jökulhlaups phenomena can only be achieved if detailed knowledge of ice thickness and related data are available. Established radio echo sounding techniques which have been successfully applied in the polar regions do not work in water-laden ice such as is to be found in the Vatnajökull area.

A previous article (Polar Record, Vol 16, No 104, p 7243 5) outlined the current results, principally from polar areas, of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) obtained during the cruises of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) research vessel Glomar Challenger. An indication was given of the considerable contribution made by DSDP coring to fundamental geoscientific research. At that time only three legs had been completed in high latitudes: leg 12 in the North Atlantic Ocean, leg 18 in the North Pactific Ocean, and leg 19 in the Bering Sea. No drilling had been undertaken in Antarctic waters but the plans for such work were outlined in the article.