US Coast Guard joins in Arctic oil rush

[babylonsister]

Another function of DHS? Other duties as assigned?


US Coast Guard joins in Arctic oil rush
US scientists will map part of the seafloor as nations vie for the region's oil and minerals.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 20, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 2

The US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy and a group of 20 scientists have embarked on a four-week cruise that will help shape the future of US efforts to claim its share of mineral and oil wealth beneath the Arctic Ocean.

The cruise, which left Barrow, Alaska, on Friday, is the fourth voyage in the last four years to the Chukchi Cap, north of the Bering Strait. The cap is part of a plateau and ridge complex that juts like a thumb from the Alaskan and Siberian continental shelves into one of the Arctic Ocean's deep basins.

Measurements taken on this cruise are of keen scientific and geopolitical interest.

"Mapping is the fundamental first step in any sort of exploration," notes Larry Mayer, the chief scientist for the cruise and a researcher at the Joint Hydrographic Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "Like Lewis and Clark, we're providing a geospatial framework for everything else we need to know" about the least understood ocean on the planet.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0820/p02s01-usgn.html