The Russian research vessel Akademik Alexandr Karpinsky from St. Petersburg has reached the subAntarctic Commonwealth Sea, an official in the Fleet Department of the Polar Marine Geology Prospecting Expedition (MGPE) -- the operator of the research vessel -- told Itar-Tass on Monday referring to a message radioed by Arkady Ustinov, skipper of the diesel-electric ship.
The vessel arrived there for field experiments under the World Ocean programme. In one week's time, the expedition will go to the planned scientific survey loop in Mawson Sea, Valery Masolov, director of the MGPE Antarctic Department, has emphasized. It is planned to carry out geophysical and magnetometric survey of the seabed to locate deposits of economic minerals, he added.
At the next stage, Masolov said, the vessel is planning to conduct a deepwater survey of the seabed in Prudes Bay in conjunction with the German national expedition aboard the polar icebreaker Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The results of the research, which is provided for by the International Polar Year programme, will be included in the atlas of the geological structure of the Earth in the Southern Ocean.
Earlier, polar geologists from St. Petersburg carried out a geophysical sounding in Antarctica and plotted the structure of the Earth's floor in Davis Sea onto a map.