Documents are presented adding further insights into a survey of gravesite memorials on Beechey Island, as well as locating the additional sites of the Franklin expedition noted in the Franklin search literature. These are augmented with current photographs.

A group of 17 Norwegian sealers died in Svenskhuset, the Swedish House at Kapp Thordsen, Spitsbergen during the winter and spring of 1872–1873. The Swedish House was built by a mining company, but was left deserted as there were poor prospects for mining in the area. The house was well stocked with food, fuel and hunting gear. The death of these men has been a mystery for 135 years although the usual interpretation has been that they died from scurvy. In an effort to challenge this historical diagnosis, the authors applied for permission to open the graves to sample the bone for lead analysis, and, if possible, to examine the skeletons for evidence of scurvy. This was granted. No objective signs of scurvy were found. The level of lead in bone, however, was very high, indicating that lead poisoning very probably played a part in the tragedy. This article reveals the historical facts behind the tragedy, the excavation of the sealers’ graves in 2008, and presents a discussion of the medical evidence.

Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands was the site of some of the earliest commercial activity to be carried out in the Antarctic with the early 19th century hunting of Antarctic fur seals. Nearly a century later it was the site of the most extensive anchorage for the reconstructed ships and ocean liners used as non-pelagic whale processing factories. Deception was also the site of what is the only successful land based commercial activity in Antarctic history. The Hektor whaling station operated in Whalers Bay from 1912 until 1931. Most of the remains of the station have now been obliterated by the volcanic activity that occurred in the late 1960s and 1970. By the later part of the twentieth century Deception Island had become a regular stop for the growing Antarctic tourist cruise industry. No other place in Antarctica has been so thoroughly identified with commercial activity.

Some Arctic scholars believe that modern reindeer herding on the Kola Peninsula has cultural continuity with the traditional period of such activity in the late 19th century. Others believe that by World War II, Soviet repression of Saami leaders, collectivisation of herding villages, and relocation of families had eliminated many traditional behaviours, especially in the Lake Imandra watershed. This study utilises informant interviews with survivors of the Babinski and Ekostrovski Saami reindeer herding villages and archival materials to understand how their families used land and water to fish, hunt, and obtain other resources including cash labour. As part of the United States National Science Foundation's human dimensions of the Arctic system (HARC) programme to examine how humans are both shaped by, and shape, the Arctic environment, the authors document how lands and waters formed traditional resource territories for Saami herding families. The results reveal that prior to their destruction, western Kola reindeer herding villages were integrated along family lines, with villages sharing mates, resource territories, and economic activities. This paper argues that there was, in fact, no cultural continuity between traditional Saami reindeer herding villages and modern herding structures such as the post-Soviet brigade on the western Kola Peninsula.

Recent analyses of anthropogenic impacts on marine systems have shown that the Ross Sea is the least affected stretch of ocean on Earth, although historical effects were not included in those studies. Herein the literature is reviewed in order to quantify the extent of extraction of biological resources from the Ross Sea continental shelf and slope from the start of the 20th century. There was none before that time. An intense extraction of Weddell seals Leptonychotes weddellii by the expeditions of the ‘heroic’ period and then by New Zealand to feed sled dogs in the 1950–1980s caused the McMurdo Sound population to decrease permanently. Otherwise no other sealing occurred. Blue whales Balaenoptera musculus intermedia were extirpated from waters of the shelf break front during the 1920s, and have not reappeared. Minke whales B. bonaerensis probably expanded into the blue whale vacated habitat, but were then hunted during the 1970–1980s; their population has since recovered. Some minke whales are now taken in ‘scientific whaling’, twice more from the slope compared to the shelf. Other hunted cetaceans never occurred over the shelf and very few ever occurred in slope waters, and therefore their demise from whaling does not apply to the Ross Sea. No industrial fishing occurred in the Ross Sea until the 1996–1997 summer, when a fishery for Antarctic toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni was initiated, especially along the slope. This fishery has grown since then with effects on the ecosystem recently becoming evident. There is probably no other ocean area where the details of biological exploitation can be so elucidated. It appears that the Ross Sea continental shelf remains the least affected of any on the globe. However the same cannot be said of the slope.

The final months of the International Geophysical Year of 1957–1958 were a period when the political and scientific future of the Antarctic was being shaped, with many of the participating countries reassessing their policies regarding the South Polar region. This paper explores the thinking of both political and scientific figures in the USSR that helped mould Soviet Antarctic policy during this time and demonstrates that the two perspectives did not necessarily coincide. The political perspective is exemplified by the deputy chairman of the USSR council of ministers and member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Aleksei Kosygin, and the scientific perspective by the deputy director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Mikhail Somov. The fact that there was interplay between both viewpoints when planning the Soviet post IGY Antarctic programmes shows that political considerations did not always prevail over the scientific, with national prestige being an area in which their interests overlapped. Ultimately, Somov was instrumental in reducing to some extent the effects of the Soviet government's attempts to curtail Soviet Antarctic research operations when it was reassessing its policy in the light of new international initiatives regarding future collaboration in the Antarctic.

This study tries to show how the different modes of the fact of urban dwelling relate to the different forms and types of behaviour and representations of reality in relation to the present and future environmental problems, and their probable and desirable solutions, of Antarctica. On the basis of a theoretical socio-ecological and socio-existential discussion, together with a ‘rootedness’ approach, the results of a comparative study on young inhabitants (15–25 years old) of the Patagonian city of San Carlos de Bariloche, and the city of Buenos Aires, are analysed in order to ascertain their representations, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours, in relation to Antarctica, its environmental problems, and possible solutions to them.

‘Rootedness’ is considered as a ‘total phenomenon’: multidimensional and interdependent among its different dimensions, spatial, social, and cultural, and also as an explanatory variable, together with anomie, (taken in this context as being an individual and/or structural situation that emerged when subjects do not feel that the current normative and axiological framework applies to them), participation, and consumerism. These variables were measured and related to different attitudes and behaviours of the young inhabitants in question.

Individuals with a high ‘rootedness’ level, and a low anomie level tend to identify environmental problems as dealing with immediate human action in terms of depredation and/or direct pollution. At the same time, this type of social actor (‘rooted’ and not anomic) tends to give priority as a solution to the socialisation and information processes. Perhaps a clear visualisation, coupled with a clear experience of the normative-axiological web of a given society could anchor individuals so that they could be in a better position to identify environmental problems, as well as possible causes and solutions thereof. A high grade of anomie causes subjects to envisage the future in a most pessimistic way.

Control and punishment as a means of remedying environmental problems tend to be emphasised predominantly among subjects within the 20–25 age range, and within a higher percentage of females. The same solution is also suggested by individuals suffering from a low actual, as well as potential, participation level.

Antarctica tends to be seen as the Terra Incognita. The high percentage of subjects that do not answer or say that they do not know the Antarctic issue can be summed up as a predominant ‘couldn't-care-less’, indifference many young people demonstrate with respect to the continent. The imaginary Antarctica, as a fruit of an aesthetic, poetic, and utopian vision is predominantly present among young people with a lower level of consumerism orientated life, a low anomie level and a high grade of potential participation, that is, individuals endowed with sufficient energy to experience and go ahead in concepts in which Antarctica rises as a metaphor of beauty, mystery, purity, virginity, and as the last shelter. Conversely, a more pragmatic and conflict aimed vision of Antarctica is to be found in a higher ratio among young people with the highest socio-economic level (SEL).

The article discusses the results of a three year research project studying international indigenous political activism using case studies from the Arctic. Drawing on two different disciplinary starting points, international relations and international law, the project addressed two interrelated questions. The first of these was how relations between states, international organisations and indigenous peoples have been and are currently constructed as legal and political practices; the second was how indigenous peoples construct their political agency through different strategies to further their political interests. These questions are addressed from the point of view of power relations. The power to act is the basic form of political agency. However, this power may take different forms of political action, for example, self-identification, participation, influence, and representation. The main conclusions of the article are: 1) indigenous political agency is based on multiple forms of power; 2) practices of power that enable and constrain indigenous political agency change over time; 3) power circulates and produces multiple sites of encounters for states, international organisations and indigenous people; 4) indigenous political agency is a question of acting; and 5) there are new challenges ahead for indigenous peoples in claiming a political voice, in particular in global climate politics.

This article summarises the history of the discovery of emperor penguin Aptenodytes forsteri colonies. Emperor penguins were probably first seen on James Cook's second voyage (1773–1775) but were not recorded as a separate species until 1844. The first breeding colony of these birds was found in 1902 and a further 32 were sighted over the next century. The total number of colonies is still unknown but today satellite technology is aiding the process of discovery.

Research following the discovery of a picture of William Edward Parry painted onto wooden boards in the stairwell of a house in Cumbria, has resulted in the identification of the probable artist. It has also been possible to show that this painting was a copy of an engraving of Parry that was published in The European Magazine and London Review, and which was based on a portrait by Samuel Drummond. It is suggested that the new picture was probably painted between 1821 and 1823, and the fact that it was painted in a small provincial community reflects the reach of the early nineteenth century media and the significance of the search for the northwest passage for the country at large.

Eckener Point (64° 26′S; 61° 36′W) lies on the northeast side of the entrance to Charlotte Bay and southeast of Murray Island, on the west coast of Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula (Fig. 1). Data from a 1987 census (Woehler 1993) show 40 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins Pygoscelis antarctica at the site. An unpublished report of 180 nests of blue-eyed cormorant Phalacrocorax atriceps/bransfieldensis (S Poncet, personal communication, 2004) in 1983 is the only other ornithological record for the site. Here we report on the results of a brief survey conducted to document the breeding seabirds for this locality. Suitable ice-free sites on the Antarctic Peninsula are limited, and Eckener Point, though small, provides nesting habitat for a high number of avian species. Plant and lichen diversity also appears unusually high.

On 2 September 2009, the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US Board on Geographic Names) confirmed a place name for George Washington Gibbs Jr, the first African-American expedition member to set foot on the Antarctic continent (Fig. 1). Gibbs Point forms the northwest entrance to Gaul Cove, on the northeast of Horseshoe Island, Marguerite Bay, Antarctic Peninsula (67°48′22″S, 67°09′38″W) (Fig. 2).

This note considers the practice of pointing the finger at the map. Using two recent examples from Australia and Norway involving outer continental shelf submissions, it considers why such a bodily gesture might actually be more than a mere gesture. With regard to the polar regions, it is a timely reminder that ceremonies of possession remain important and provides further opportunity to reflect on the embodied and gendered nature of these activities. Being seen is one thing and being cited is another.