Historical sites in Antarctica and Svalbard contain the material remains of past activities of exploration and exploitation of these regions. These sites have been subject to transformation by cultural and non-cultural (natural) processes since their abandonment to the present. For research and management purposes it is important to monitor and explain these changes. This article focuses on the transformation of historic features in Antarctica and Svalbard as assessed through repeat photography. Seven historical features were selected representing a range of site types and past and present site functions. Data collection was based on the opportunistic reproduction of photographs of historic features taken up to 20+ years previously. Data analysis was performed using the concepts of site formation processes developed by M.B. Schiffer (1983, 1987). Time-serial changes were observed in the seven photo-couples examined in the present instance. No feature degraded significantly during the monitoring period; rather, several features were restored in different ways. Changes were interpreted to result from a range of cultural processes (including conservation, research, and tourism) and natural processes (mainly wind action). Local changes take place in the context of broader regional developments in Antarctica and Svalbard. Despite the ‘time capsule’ narratives about some sites, historical sites in the polar regions are dynamic entities that not only reflect the past as it once was but are also a window onto the present.

This article considers the legal and policy issues surrounding the establishment of continental shelves beyond 200 nautical miles (nm) from sub-Antarctic islands. Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) a coastal state may establish a continental shelf that extends seawards beyond 200 nm where the continental shelf continues, normally to a total distance of no more than 350 nm. To establish such an extended continental shelf (ECS) a coastal state must file a submission of delineation data with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a technical body established by UNCLOS.

The rights of coastal states present particular difficulties in the Antarctic Treaty area (ATA), due to the general non-recognition of the seven territorial claims and the provisions of article IV of the Antarctic Treaty. Accordingly, Antarctic claimant states are generally adopting a restrained approach to the issue of ECS as appertaining to claimed territories in Antarctica in their submissions to the CLCS. These states appear to recognise that they cannot secure the normal prerogatives of a coastal state from territorial sea baselines within the ATA, at least for the duration of the present Antarctic Treaty system (ATS). A different approach is being taken with respect of sub-Antarctic islands lying north of the ATA. Sovereignty over sub-Antarctic territory north of the ATA is, with the exception of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, not contested. Accordingly, rights in relation to any continental shelf attaching to sub-Antarctic islands may be realised, apparently without challenging the Antarctic modus vivendi.

However, the ECS of several sub-Antarctic islands penetrate the ATA. In 2008, the CLCS largely endorsed the 2004 Australian submission that included data on ECS from Australia's sub-Antarctic islands of Macquarie Island and the Heard and McDonald group. The ECS from both groups penetrates south of 60°S into the ATA, in the case of Heard and McDonald covering a huge area. Although the wider dispute regarding sovereignty between the United Kingdom and Argentina adds complexity to the case, the South Sandwich Islands are sufficiently close to the ATA that their continental shelf also penetrates the area. In the event that the CLCS were ever able to make a recommendation on a submission of data relating to the South Sandwich Islands (something that could only occur with the consent of Argentina and the United Kingdom) the result would be a situation similar to that pertaining to the Australian sub-Antarctic islands.

The consequence of these developments is that rights to seabed areas within the ATA have been assigned to individual states. On the face of it, this appears to be in conflict with the norm of collective responsibility that was established by the Antarctic Treaty 50 years ago precisely to constrain sovereignty issues in the region. What is suggested by this practice is a difference in the attitude of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to rights generated from territory within the ATA and rights generated from external territory. Nonetheless, there may be significant implications flowing from the latter for resource issues within the ATA. Minerals exploitation on sub-Antarctic extended continental shelf within the ATA is precluded in the near-term because of cost, the formal prohibition under article 7 of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, and the fact that all sub-Antarctic coastal states are ATCPs. However the situation in regard to other resource activities is less clear. Bioprospecting could proceed subject to coastal state approval pursuant to the provisions of UNCLOS relating to marine scientific research, and there is no mandatory regulation under the ATS. The possibility that a coastal state may seek to realise rights on the ECS in relation to genetic resources may complicate collective ATS approaches and pose wider geopolitical challenges. In the longer term, the fact that some Antarctic states are presently seeking to secure rights that are essentially about ensuring their preclusive access to resources may have significant implications for strategic interests in the greater Antarctic region.

Water related activities result in a large number of fatalities annually throughout Canada, especially in the Canadian north, where drowning rates are up to ten times the national average. This study used participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research to understand why residents of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories (NWT) rarely wear lifejackets. Three themes emerged. Firstly residents largely perceive lifejackets to be inaccessible, secondly drownings are attributed to factors other than failing to wear a lifejacket and thirdly lifejacket use is not encouraged by important individuals in the community. It is suggested that successful lifejacket promotion for this population requires drowning prevention programmes that move away from simplistic approaches that encourage people to wear lifejackets and instead must utilise an approach that addresses each component of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

With global warming, the clearance of the Northwest Passage and the rising demands for new energy resources, the sovereignty of Canadian and other national land claims in the Arctic north is coming into question by those wishing to control access to this region. The present paper examines issues involving emerging landmasses, maritime rights, strategic control and navigation, perhaps the most important variable, and the consequences in terms of commercial economies and geopolitical impacts. We consider many variables such as the 1982 Falkland Islands war as a demonstrative example that may have translatable impact in future years. Our purpose in this paper is to raise awareness of impending geopolitical activities that are inevitable during the 21st century as the Arctic pack ice retreats.

Prior to the discovery in 1999 of an archaeological site near Cape Southwest, on southern Axel Heiberg Island, little was known about the movements of the ill fated 1930 German Arctic Expedition, led by Hans K.E. Krüger. What was known was based on the content of three cairn documents that spanned a period of just thirteen days. This paper presents new information that expands our knowledge of the expedition's route using catalogue labels found with geological specimens collected by Krüger and recovered from the site. The movements of the expedition over a period of 43 days are reconstructed, ten additions are made to the known itinerary, and an approximate date of the group's arrival at Cape Southwest is presented. The data show that despite concerns about the health of both Krüger and his Danish assistant, and about the weight of equipment being transported, the expedition had made good progress prior to reaching Cape Southwest.

In 1873, the British explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith concluded the private oceanographic and geographical explorations in the seas around Svalbard that he had begun in 1871 and continued in 1872. The logistics of the 1873 expedition, however, were far more complicated than those of the first two voyages. Rather than using a single ship as he had done with the sailing vessel Samson the previous summers, Leigh Smith chartered James Lamont's Arctic steamer Diana and employed Samson as a reserve supply tender. With the added supplies Samson afforded, Leigh Smith planned to round the northeast limit of Svalbard, which he had discovered in 1871, and survey Kong Karls Land. Among those invited to join to expedition was a twenty-three-year-old member of the Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Herbert C. Chermside, who would visit the Arctic for the first and last time in a long life of military service. It was to Chermside that Leigh Smith entrusted the keeping of the expedition's logbooks. These three unpublished journals, along with a log kept by Samson's captain, William Walker, provide details of an expedition that, while it failed in its primary objective to round Nordaustlandet, did succeed in relieving Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's Swedish polar expedition beset near Mosselbukta. It also maintained an array of contacts with whalers and sealers, for example the Peterhead whaler David Gray and the Norwegian skipper Frederick Christian Mack, regarding local conditions around Svalbard. At Augustabukta, Chermside's observations of uplifted skeletons of remotely harvested whales give estimated death ranges of between 1569–1691 and 1764–1807. The expedition would end with a major island in Svalbard being named for Chermside.

Joseph Elzéar Bernier's well known sector claim of 1 July 1909 was predated by a similar, but until now unknown, proclamation in 1907. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although eager to assert Canadian sovereignty, was unwilling to countenance the first claim because he did not think that the right time for such a gesture had yet come. However, in 1909 Bernier's action was welcomed, but only as a convenient way to counter the widely publicised American claim made by Robert Peary. In the eyes of government officials, neither of Bernier's proclamations held any real importance for Canada's northern sovereignty which rested primarily on the 1880 transfer of ownership from Britain. Bernier believed that his achievements had never been sufficiently recognised, but in fact the problem was that he himself overrated their significance.

A bowhead whale mother and calf pair was recorded off the northeast Greenland coast in July 2009. This is apparently the first calf observed in the Spitsbergen stock of the bowhead whale since 1981.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the United Kingdom will fund, from January 2010 onwards, a series of four seminars on the theme of ‘Knowledges, resources and legal regimes: the new geopolitics of the polar regions’. Details are provided of the seminars and the outputs including the creation of a database outlining British based expertise in the humanities and social sciences. In the aftermath of the International Polar Year, the series should not only be timely but also strategic in the sense of clarifying the disciplinary and geographical range and extent of that expertise.