Мурманская миля. 2016, № 3.

ONBOARD THE RESEARCH VESSEL 60 voyage was to India. Besides, still being at the University I had got used to computers and those skills turned out very useful onboard the vessels.” Aleksey Khodnevich has worked onboard the NALIVKIN fo r five years already. He went into the second voyage as the deputy party chief. But now he is looking forward to the well- deserved rest: “When I return to Murmansk onboard the ANGRAPA probably everything will be covered with snow there. In this case I will immediately go to the slope Yuzhny or to Kirovsk. We are a very close-knit team of snowboarders. Nothing can be better than riding on hard ground.” THE LAPTEV SEA SUEDE-LIKE SURFACE The NALIVKIN sailed to the Kara Sea fo r the seismic survey performance and in the Laptev Sea they had to conduct magnetic and gravimetry explorations. The full set of works fo r a geophysicist! The Laptev Sea is tenderly called “ Lapti” by geophysicists. There are severe ice conditions in the Laptev Sea in late autumn. It is very dark because of the polar night and there is tim ing difference of 5 hours with Moscow time. It’s because we have reached the longitude of East Siberia and somewhere straight to the south from the NALIVKIN at Lake Baikal the local wind “ barguzin” as it was sung, «moves the w a ve s .» . We went to the Laptev Sea from the Kara through the straits of Matisen and Vilkitsky. So many legendary native names there are on the maps of the Arctic! Fyodor Matisen explored exactly these places at the beginning of the last century. And during the survey of Boris Vilkitsky in September 1913 there was made the most important discovery of the 2 0 th century - A le k s a n d r DUBROVIN a nd D m itry OLEYNIKOV w ith a m a g n e to m e te r А л е к с а н д р ДУБРОВИН и Д м и т р и й ОЛЕЙНИ КО В с м а г н и т о м е т р о м they found a huge archipelago Severnaya Zemlya, to the south of which the NALIVKIN is going to work now. “Sometimes there appears a necessity and a lucky opportunity to use different methods. We are going to conduct integrated geophysical exploration,” explained Viktor Trofimov, Party Chief. For this reason besides the streamer the NALIVKIN towed a small orange magnetometer, which was able to detect the tiniest changes of the magnetic field under the bottom of the sea. And there was a special room for the gravimeter which was able of detecting hardly noticeable vibration of gravity force on the crust. Gravimeter was located the closest to the gravity centre of the vessel, on the lowest deck, where the rough sea was felt less. But the main peculiarity of works in the Laptev Sea was the ice. I was lucky to watch the ice formation offshore. Imagine: there was salty water all over the temperature of which on the surface was a bit below zero Celsius. In late autumn in the Arctic storms are usual, but the snow on the water surface doesn’t melt. Little by little every snowflake was being covered with ice and in short time the NALIVKIN was going through the so called “shuga” - the layer of the smallest pieces of ice. Visually the water surface seemed to be covered with suede. The pieces of ice were getting bigger before our eyes and in short time there was pancake ice all around. It looked like the water lilies leaves were floating on the water surface. The icy pancakes were getting huge and became a monolith. More than once the NALIVKIN had to move through the icy fields of 0.5 m thick. Without an icebreaker! The scientific fleet veteran fully confirmed her ice class. October 2014 became the most exotic month fo r the photographer during the survey and I recall sailing in suede-like waters of the Laptev Sea with pleasure today. MURMANSK MILE • 3-2016