In April 2017, Victoria University of Wellington launched ICE101X—Antarctica: From Geology to Human History—on the global edX platform. This Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, attracted 5735 learners from around the world, who engaged with content about Antarctic science, history, geology, and culture, primarily through video lectures filmed in Antarctica. Analysis of feedback from learners in three iterations of the course, offered between 2015 and 2017 and culminating in ICE101X, revealed that learners enjoyed the immersive Antarctic field lectures and learning through a diverse set of disciplinary lenses, had some preconceptions about Antarctica that were challenged by the course content, and completed the course with a new sense of interest in and protection of Antarctica.

The United States has sometimes been called a reluctant Arctic actor, but during its chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2015–2017) the US engaged as an active proponent of Arctic cooperation, using the region as a showcase for strong global climate policy. This paper places US Arctic policy development during the Obama presidency within a longer time perspective, with a focus on how US interests towards the region have been formulated in policies and policy statements. The paper uses frame analysis to identify overarching discourses and discusses the extent to which certain themes and political logics recur or shift over time. It highlights economic development and national competitiveness as a prominent recurring frame, but also that the policy discourse has moved from nation-building and military security towards a broader security perspective, with attention to energy supply for the US, and more recently also to the implications of climate change. Over time, there is a clear shift from reluctance towards Arctic regional cooperation to embracing it. Moreover, it highlights how different stands in relation to climate change have affected Arctic cooperation in the past and may do so again in the future.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the British Antarctic Survey have built a transportable laboratory facility, named the Dirck Gerritsz Laboratory, to accommodate new scientific research on and from the western Antarctic Peninsula. The design provides a flexible, modular, plug-and-play, innovative and sustainable laboratory setup. The docking station houses four 20-foot ISO standard high-cube containers, each of which contains a different laboratory. Special technological features were used to minimise the environmental impact. The four laboratory containers are flexible and can be installed and used as required, and renewed or removed when necessary. The container laboratories have provided, since opening in 2013, enhanced facilities for global climate change research through studying the community composition of phytoplankton; the ecological impact of virus-induced mortality in different phytoplankton groups; dimethylsulphide and brominated compound fluxes; and CO2 concentrations and trace elements in sea water. Transportable research laboratory facilities provide an effective and efficient approach for undertaking scientific research in challenging environments and might be the start of a new way of undertaking research, including exchanging laboratory modules between research stations in Antarctica.

Russia has dropped rocket stages fuelled with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) into the Barents Sea and the North Water Polynya—areas of considerable ecological importance—on ten occasions since 2002. The stages come from SS-19 intercontinental missiles that have been re-purposed for launching satellites. UDMH is a highly toxic chemical that has caused widespread health and environmental damage in Kazakhstan and Russia as a result of its extensive use there as a rocket fuel. Not all of the fuel on-board is consumed during a launch and the residual fuel tends to escape the incoming stages and form aerosol clouds that drift over large areas. This dropping of the rocket stages is of considerable concern to the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, who only learned about the practice in 2016. It is also a violation of several treaties as well as customary international law. At least two more launches of UDMH-fuelled rockets on the same trajectory are currently planned—even though alternative non-toxic rocket systems exist.

The future is uncertain for Antarctica, with many possibilities – some more plausible, others more preferable. Indeed, the region and its governance regime may be reaching (or may have reached) a crossroads moment as a result of a series of challenges, including the changing Antarctic climate and environment, increasing human activity, shifting values among Antarctic states and a low-cost, somewhat benign governance regime (the Antarctic Treaty System). Within this context there are a number of interdependent drivers that are likely to influence Antarctica's future over, say, 25 years: global environmental and socio-economic developments; Antarctic governance; Antarctic research, including national Antarctic programme operations; and Antarctic tourism. The research presented here involved a thorough examination of Antarctic literature on current Antarctic developments and challenges, and an assessment of global trends. Scenarios were developed through a facilitated workshop process. From these, four future scenarios were developed based on interactions between these drivers. The resulting scenarios provide a dynamic, evolving possibility space to be explored as a means of understanding where Antarctic issues might evolve, depending on the growth or diminishing importance of drivers. In turn these suggest that more structured polar futures are needed based on formal quantitative and qualitative data.

The admission of China as an observer in the Arctic Council in 2013 was a significant step in the ongoing evolution of the country's Arctic policy, but Beijing is still concerned about being accepted as a regional player given its geography and arguably lack of an Arctic history. As the Arctic becomes more open to scientific and economic engagement, China wishes to develop the idea of the Arctic as more of an international space as opposed to strictly a regional one, and to allow non-Arctic states, such as China itself, to become accepted as Arctic actors. However, in order to avoid a backlash from the Arctic states and potential exclusion from the region's development, Beijing cannot effectively be a unilateral ‘norm-maker’ in the Arctic. Instead, China has sought to develop the identity of a regional ‘norm entrepreneur’, engaging the Arctic on many levels to promote the norm of partnerships between Arctic and non-Arctic actors to promote positive sum outcomes. Through engagement via several areas and governmental levels, Beijing hopes to succeed in being widely viewed as a ‘near-Arctic state’ which can contribute to new norms, and possibly new regimes, in an Arctic which shows many signs of becoming further internationalised.

This paper (1) reviews the history of sealing and whaling in the Southern Ocean to illustrate how market demands combined with no or ineffective regulation of catches led to the overexploitation and near extinction of southern fur seals, southern elephant seals and all but one of the Southern Ocean populations of large whales; (2) indicates how the overexploitation and depletion of krill-eating whales led to the Krill Surplus Hypothesis, and the development of the Antarctic krill fishery and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR); (3) points out how misinterpretation of the reference to ‘rational use’ in CCAMLR Article II(2), combined with consensus decision-making and the potential growth of markets for Antarctic krill, could lead to ineffective regulation of the krill fishery and adverse effects on the krill resource, on recovery of depleted populations of krill-dependent whales, and on other ecologically related species and populations; and (4) identifies reasonable actions that could be taken cooperatively by the International Whaling Commission and the CCAMLR Commission to minimise the risk that the krill fishery will prevent or impede recovery of depleted populations of krill-dependent whales.

During an intense period of only 14 months, from June 2010 to August 2011, six major cooperation agreements between oil companies were announced in Russia. Almost all of these partnerships involved offshore projects, with an international oil company as one of the partners and Rosneft as the other. The agreements were concentrated along Russia's Arctic petroleum frontier, and the three that survived the longest involved oil or gas extraction in the Arctic. This article analyses and compares the contents and contexts of the agreements, to ascertain what they have to tell about access for international companies to Russia's offshore petroleum resources and the influence of competing Russian political actors over the country's petroleum sector. The article argues that the new partnerships did represent an intention to open up the Russian continental shelf, and that the agreements were driven and shaped by a series of needs: to secure foreign capital and competence, to reduce exploration risk, to lobby for a better tax framework, to show the government that necessary action was being taken to launch exploration activities, to improve Rosneft's image abroad, and either to avert or prepare for future privatisation of state companies such as Rosneft.

In the literature of the exploration of the Antarctic in the early 20th century, there are many references to ‘medical comforts’. While ‘medical comforts’ was sometimes used as a euphemism for alcoholic beverages, the term, which originated in the army, covered all foods and drinks used for the treatment and prevention of illness and during convalescence. This article describes the use of medical comforts during the Antarctic expeditions of the so called ‘heroic age’. Apart from alcohol, medical comforts included beef extracts, milk extracts and arrowroot. These products were extensively advertised to the medical and nursing professions and to the general public and the Antarctic connection was sometimes used in the advertising. The products were largely devoid of vitamins and their use may have contributed to some of the disease that occurred on these expeditions.

On the Belgica expedition (1897–1899), Dr F.A. Cook described a disease that he called ‘polar anaemia’ and on this expedition it affected most of the expedition members and caused one death. The symptoms were shortness of breath, abnormalities of the pulse and oedema (swelling of the legs) and the disease was clearly cardiac failure. During the heroic age of Antarctic exploration a similar disease affected at least eight other expeditions causing five other deaths. This disease was very similar (and probably identical) to a disease affecting (mostly) Scandinavian seamen and called ‘ship beri-beri’. Both diseases were almost certainly what is now called wet beri-beri due to thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency though most sufferers were probably also vitamin C deficient and some may have had both beri-beri and scurvy. It may have been exacerbated by invalid diets. This paper describes the disease and how it was considered and treated at the time.