Jackie Grebmeier, a biological oceanographer, has studied animal populations in these Arctic waters for 25 years.
The damage occurred during a test of what Shell says would be the first-ever containment system deployed in Arctic waters.
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Living near arctic waters, its bivalves clam up for four-to-six months each year, making the oyster's muscles bigger and meat sweeter.
The steel vessel is double-hulled and designed for drilling in Arctic waters.
On the other hand, it suspended its plans to drill in Alaskan Arctic waters in 2014 because of uncertainties over federal regulatory and permitting standards.
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When the vast ice sheets and glaciers melt, they lose their reflective power, and instead, oceans and land absorb the heat, causing the Arctic waters and the atmosphere to warm faster.
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The new observatory will "support longer-term, science-based understanding of the dramatic changes taking place in Arctic waters, " said Kim Juniper, with NEPTUNE Canada, in a statement from the University of Victoria.
As much as 150, 000 gallons of ultra-low sulfur diesel and about 12, 000 gallons of other petroleum products are on board the Kulluk, a double-hulled steel vessel with a helicopter landing pad and tower in the middle designed for drilling in Arctic waters.
The cost of a blowout in the Arctic, far from land, in frigid waters, is incalculable.
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Using ever fancier technologies, the oil business is drilling in deeper waters, more difficult terrain and even in the Arctic (which, as global warming melts the polar ice cap, will perversely become the next great prize in oil).
For the moment, though, European and American security experts are more interested in another matter: what cargo a Russian vessel, Arctic Sea, was carrying when it vanished in closely monitored European waters, why a journalist who alerted the world to its disappearance had to flee Russia and why Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, paid an urgent and secret visit to Moscow just a few days later.
Chemical effects related to acidification have also been encountered in surface waters of the Bering Strait and the Canada Basin of the central Arctic Ocean.
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.
The Ministry of Defence has said several thousand who served on the Arctic Convoys had already received the Atlantic Star campaign medal, which was awarded for service in the Atlantic and home waters.
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