Arctic ministers agreed at the latest 2015 Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Iqaluit to establish a ‘Task Force to assess future needs for a regional seas program or other mechanism, as appropriate, for increased cooperation in Arctic marine areas.’ Involving the Arctic Council in increased coordination of national marine management measures, and in drawing on experts from international organisations or treaty bodies to address related questions, is consistent with the longstanding advisory role of the Arctic Council. It also builds prudently on the council's emerging role as convener to accomplish discrete tasks critical to the health of the Arctic environment and the wellbeing of Arctic peoples. In order to strengthen Arctic marine cooperation and governance, the Arctic Council should adopt some instrument or arrangement through which it can more effectively coordinate among national management efforts affecting the Arctic marine environment and increase the effectiveness of the interplay with global governance mechanisms. The purpose of this commentary is to present World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) perspectives on two important dimensions of this proposal. First, the commentary is to review the arguments as to why a strong regional seas program for the Arctic is required. Second, it is to address a series of questions that arise in considering the design of a framework mechanism necessary to create the program. The paper will provide WWF's views with regards to the mandate and scope of a future cooperative mechanism, its relationship to the Arctic Council and membership, and its legal form.

There have been few more controversial figures in the history of exploration than Amerigo Vespucci, and it is therefore necessary to be extremely cautious in deciding whether he did, or did not, discover the island of South Georgia in the year 1501. Humboldt and Mill believed that he might have done so, but thought that, on the whole, his most likely landfall was southern Patagonia or Tierra del Fuego. Matthews, who devoted considerable attention to working out distances and directions, came to the conclusion that Vespucci very probably arrived at South Georgia after leaving the coast of Brazil and sailing south-westwards, while the Australian map of Antarctica, published in Canberra in 1939, and the Antarctic Pilot (London, second edition, 1948) have respectively described this achievement as a probability and as a possibility.

As architects for the extensions of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Lensfield Road, Cambridge, we have been asked to supply a description of the building.

The original Institute building, which was opened in November 1934, was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, R. A. It contained a museum on the ground floor, a library on the first floor, a picture gallery above and a few offices or research rooms. It is a small formal classical block, designed in a carefully detailed Georgian manner, and built of attractive warm buff-coloured facing bricks with limestone dressings and a brown tiled roof.

During World War 1 John Player & Sons issued two series of cigarette cards, both entitled ‘Polar Exploration’. The first, probably issued in 1915, covered both Arctic and Antarctic subjects, but the second, issued in 1916, confined itself to the southern continent. Eight cards from the first series were derived from Shackleton's book The heart of the Antarctic. Commander E.R.G.R. ‘Teddy’ Evans, captain of R.F. Scott's vessel Terra Nova, was responsible for both the illustrations and texts of the cards in the second series.