FSUE Atomflot, ROSATOM subsidiary in charge of operation and maintenance of the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have signed a cooperation agreement, ROSATOM says in a press release.
The agreement was signed by FSUE Atomflot Director General Mustafa Kashka and the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute’s Deputy Director Dmitry Ishkulov. The signing ceremony took place as part of the ROSATOM-organised event “Arctic Day.”
The parties have identified the monitoring, assessment, and forecasting of the impact of FSUE Atomflot-overseen navigation in the water area of the Northern Sea Route on the environment and animal and plant life of the Arctic and adjacent waters as the key areas of their cooperation in research activities.
“Our company actively supports all environmental programmes, including those pertaining to the environmental rehabilitation of the North-West region,” said FSUE Atomflot Director General Mustafa Kashka. “With the intensification of navigation along the Northern Sea Route, it is important for us to preserve the diversity of species in the Arctic. Scientists will be able to monitor the water area of the Northern Sea Route on nuclear icebreakers. The results of their work will become the basis for recommendations for shippers.”
“It should be noted that the concluded agreement and upcoming work are a logical continuation of a nearly ten-year period of research [that was] carried out by the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute with FSUE Atomflot’s active support in the late nineties and early 2000s,” said the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute’s Deputy Director Dmitry Ishkulov. “More than fifty scientific articles have been published in journals of the highest level, both Russian and non-Russian, based on the fruits of [those years of research]. I am confident that the upcoming period of joint work will enable us to raise the quality of our research to a new level and give us new knowledge about the nature of the Arctic region.”
In the near future, FSUE Atomflot and the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute will develop a research programme for the water area of the Northern Sea Route for the 2021-2022 winter-spring navigation.