[A Commission of Inquiry into the terms and conditions that would have to be established in the event of a natural gas pipeline corridor being built along the Mackenzie Valley heard evidence for about 18 months in all the potentially affected communities, as well as in Yellowknife and some southern cities. The Commission was headed by Justice Thomas Berger, and came to be known as the Berger Inquiry. This article is based on material contained in two papers, entitled ‘Industrial impact’ and ‘An overview’, presented at the Inquiry by the author in August 1976. We are grateful to the Inquiry for allowing us to make use of the material.

In a great number of articles now, Soviet historians have dealt with the attractive theme of the enormity of western, and especially American, activities on the north-eastern fringes of Siberia—activities which, starting in the 1860's, lasted for three quarters of a century. Yet, showing no disrespect to scholars of the stamp of N. Zhikharev, S. V. Bakhrushin, and M. I. Belov, through the operation of one underlying tendency all these accounts of western penetration of Chukotka may be regarded as comprising one large group. For 40 years they have tended, if not wholly to ignore the final phase of North American commercial ‘intervention’ in Chukotka in the years following 1920, then at least to place no emphasis whatever on the awkward facts, for instance, that ‘friendly direct contact between Alaska's and Chukotka's natives went on for several years’ and that some trips between the continents ‘went on until as late as 1944’. The reasons for this are not hard to find: Chukotkan history of the third decade is potentially embarrassing to Moscow. In 1921 the question of whether or not Chukotka formed a part of the Soviet state had not been settled, nor was absolute authority exercised in the remote north-east by the Bolsheviks at that point or, indeed, in 1922. Now a White Russian force would dominate an area, now a detachment of the Japanese army. Worse, there was hostility towards the Bolsheviks in Chukotka even after the demise of the anti-Bolshevik leader Bochkarev in 1923. But more embarrassing than any anti-Bolshevik or petty-bourgeois sentiment, there can be no doubt, has proved the tiresome fact that Moscow blessed the trips to Anadyr' and other points on the Chukotkan littoral made by western schooner masters. Here is the rub: for the new government ‘found it convenient to encourage some American traders to continue, because the Government's own communications with Chukotka were so uncertain’.

The United States Coast Guard's involvement in the polar regions and, eventually, with polar icebreakers, reaches back to 1867, when Alaska was purchased from the Soviet Union. That same year the US Revenue Cutter Service, as the US Coast Guard was then known, despatched the Lincoln north to make the first official exploration of the new territory. Out of this voyage was born the Service's close association with the polar regions which continues today (Evans, 1949).

Since 1965 South Africa- has conducted a biological research programme on its two sub-Antarctic islands, Marion and Prince Edward. This programme is organized under the auspices of the South African Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SASCAR) and is sponsored by the South African Department of Transport. The first South African scientific expedition to the islands in 1965–66 yielded much information on the geology, zoology and botany of the two islands (van Zinderen Bakker Sr and others, 1971). The programme has since developed into a sophisticated ecological/physiological study, having as its major objective an understanding of the food cycles operative within the islands' ecosystems. The realization of this objective involves detailed investigations into the primary and secondary production of the various components of the islands' biota as well as a quantitative inquiry into the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients operative within the terrestrial, fresh and salt-water environs of the islands.

This brief report describes the first year of a joint Cambridge University—Iceland University two-year project to develop radio echo depth-sounding apparatus suitable for the temperate ice of the Vatnajökull ice cap. There is much interest in obtaining detailed ice thickness measurements for the 8 400 km2 Vatnajökull area, where only limited ice-depth surveys, using bore-hole and seismxic techniques, have been carried out in the past. A line of volcanic and geothermal activity extends through the western regions of the ice and creates a sub-glacial lake, Grimsvotn, which collapses every five years or so giving rise to the jökulhlaups, a catastrophic flooding which affects considerable areas of the Icelandic coast to the south of Vatnajökull. Proper understanding of the jökulhlaups phenomena can only be achieved if detailed knowledge of ice thickness and related data are available. Established radio echo sounding techniques which have been successfully applied in the polar regions do not work in water-laden ice such as is to be found in the Vatnajökull area.

A seven-man party from the Polytechnic of Central London spent from 25 July to 26 August in north-west Spitsbergen. Field work included botanical survey and sampling, recording of human sleep patterns, and the making of a 16 mm colour film. The party had the support facility of a former Scottish fishing vessel, the Copious, which it shared with the Cambridge Spitsbergen Expedition. The group landed in the far north of Vasahalvøya on Makarovbreen. Overland glacier journeys were made from Makarovbreen south to Liefdef jorden and Bockf jorden, and from the lower end of Woodf jorden across to Kongsf jorden via Blomstrandbreen—roughly 160 km in all.

Roslin Gletscher is a sub-polar glacier in the central Stauning Alper which lie at 72°N in east Greenland. Interest has been focussed on this glacier in recent years since it is clearly of the surging type. The primary aim of the expedition was to survey a longitudinal profile of the glacier and to re-survey stake lines established by previous expeditions to measure ice flow rates. It is hoped that the results will throw some light on the stage of the surge cycle that has been reached. This should improve predictions of when the next surge may occur and allow closer study of the mechanisms which cause the glacier to surge. A secondary aim was to relocate a food and equipment dump, left from earlier expeditions, which was threatened by moraine movement.

The 15-man expedition did not get off to a good start. The ship originally chartered for the Antarctic voyage, the Repunte, was impounded in a Uruguayan shipyard and vital supplies were sequestered by the Uruguayan customs authorities. It was in a Norwegian vessel, the Rig Mate, that the party eventually landed at Admiralty Bay, on King George Island. The original intention had been to set up a permanent base on Ross Island, but the delay in Montevideo called for a change of plan. So the first Italian base in the Antarctic was established at Admiralty Bay, at a spot named ‘Conca Italia’ by the expedition. The base is well suited for eight people, with an area of 80 m2 instead of the planned 130 m2.