New Siberian Islands or Novosibirsk Islands (Yakut. Sana Sibiir
aryylara) is an archipelago belonging to Russia in the Arctic Ocean
between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea, administratively
belongs to Yakutia (Bulunsky ulus). The area is 38.4 thousand km².
New Siberian Islands are part of the protected zone of the
Ust-Lensky State Nature Reserve.
Consists of three groups of
islands: Lyakhovsky Islands, Anjou Islands and De Long Islands.
In 1646, M. V. Stadukhin informed the Yakut
voivode Vasily Pushkin that he and his comrades had discovered a
large island against the mouths of the Indigirka and Kolyma rivers:
"the island is much in sight, and the mountains are snowy, and the
falls and streams are notable." The Cossacks considered this island
and the Novosibirsk archipelago to be part of the giant Novaya
Zemlya.
The first reliable information about the islands at
the beginning of the 18th century was reported by the Cossack Yakov
Permyakov, who sailed from the mouth of the Lena to the Kolyma. In
1712, he, as part of a Cossack detachment led by Mercury Vagin,
landed on the island of Bolshoi Lyakhovsky. Then Yakov Permyakov and
Mercury Vagin set off on sledges to the land that lay in the sea
opposite the Holy Nose. It was the southernmost island of the
Novosibirsk archipelago - First Lyakhovsky. On the First Lyakhovsky
Island, they noticed that "there are deer and polar foxes and wolves
on that island." Alexei Dementyev, who participated in the first
campaign, told about this, and testified that he saw another island
to the north of the First Lyakhovsky Island.
According to the
historian of Siberia of the XIX century G. Spassky, Siberian
merchants Nikita Shalaurov and Ivan Bakhov in the middle of the
XVIII century on the Novosibirsk Islands discovered deposits of
mammoth bone.
In the summer of 1761, Nikita Shalaurov,
sailing from Yana to Kolyma, saw to the north of the Holy Nose at
latitude 72 ° 33, longitude 148 ° “the great land with mountains
with seven tops”. These words are recorded in the logbook of the
expedition ship "Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov" and on the map of N.
Shalaurov. Consequently, Shalaurov was the first to tell the world
about the Lyakhovsky Islands, the first to put their southernmost
outlines on the map presented to the Admiralty College and the
Senate.
Despite such clear evidence of pioneering, it is
generally accepted that the New Siberian Islands were discovered in
1770 by the merchant Ivan Lyakhov.
Once on the coast of the
Arctic Ocean, he noticed a herd of wild deer, which led him across
the ice to an unknown mountainous island. After 20 versts the second
island appeared, but the deer did not stop there and went further -
to an unknown land. On the new land, Lyakhov found many Arctic foxes
and mammoth tusks. Notifying about his discovery to Petersburg, he
asked to be allowed to have a monopoly on the islands. This right
was granted to him by the decree of Catherine II, and the empress
ordered to call the islands Lyakhovsky. In 1773, Ivan Lyakhov again
went to the archipelago and, following the trail of a reindeer herd,
went to the third island - Kotelny. There he found traces of the
former explorers: a boiler of green copper, the remains of a wooden
ship and firewood. On the new archipelago, Lyakhov organized the
fishing of arctic fox and the extraction of mammoth bones and laid
two winter huts: Maloe and Korennoye.
In connection with
commercial development in 1775, 1777, 1778, a state inventory was
carried out on the Lyakhovsky Islands. Yakov Sannikov, the leader of
the Syrovatsky merchants, in 1800 visited one of the little-known,
discovered in 1697 by the boyar's son Maxim Mukhoplev, a small
mountainous island, which he called Stolbov. At the time of
Sannikov, there were old memorial signs there - Russian crosses
erected by sailors who sailed from the mouth of the Lena to
Indigirka and Kolyma.
In 1805, Yakov Sannikov discovered
Faddeevsky Island, and the next year - New Siberia Island. In the
capital, having learned about these discoveries, it was suggested
that in this area, possibly, a large land extends towards North
America. As a result, it was decided to send government expeditions
to the area of Sannikov discovery.
The first such
expedition was led by a zoologist by education Matvey Gedenshtrom,
who served as a collegiate registrar in Tobolsk. In 1808-1810, the
expedition with the help of Yakov Sannikov carried out an inventory
of the archipelago.
In 1811, Yakov Sannikov found on the
island the site of a Russian industrialist during the beginning of
the development of northeast Asia. The fact that the Russians
visited the Novosibirsk Islands in the 17th century is also
evidenced by the cross on the grave on Kotelny Island, on which
Yakov Sannikov saw an inscription in Russian. Gedenstrom's work on
the archipelago was continued by the talented geodesist P.
Pshenitsyn.
In 1820, an expedition led by Fleet Lieutenant
Peter Fedorovich Anzhu made an accurate map of the islands,
conducting route surveys along their shores, and also tried to find
the mysterious land seen by Yakov Sannikov.
In 1879-1880, the
archipelago was visited by the American polar expedition of George
Delong on the schooner Jeannette, which discovered the islands of
Jeannette and Henrietta.
In 1886, Eduard Toll explored the
Lyakhovsky Islands, and then, together with Dr. A. A. Bunge,
traveled around Kotelny Island, from the coast of which he allegedly
saw Sannikov Land. In 1898, Toll, supported by the Imperial Academy
of Sciences and the tsarist government, worried about the
penetration of foreigners into the Arctic, made a proposal in the
press to equip an expedition in search of Sannikov Land. He left on
June 8, 1900 from St. Petersburg on the schooner "Zarya".
On the way to Lyakhovsky Island, the expedition, without
encountering ice, unhindered, reached the northern tip of Kotelny
Island. Toll decided to follow to Bennett's Island, but near it he
entered a zone of dense fog, in the breaks of which the first ice
appeared, and then an ice barrier. The Zarya turned back to Kotelniy
Island, where it hibernated in Nerpichya Bay, having carried out
meteorological observations. On May 23, 1901, four people led by
Edward Toll on dog sleds, seizing the canoes, went out to the side
of Bennett's Island and disappeared without a trace.
Exploration of the New Siberian Islands and the De Long archipelago
was continued by the Hydrographic Expedition of the Arctic Ocean. In
1912 the icebreaking ships "Taimyr" and "Vaygach" approached the
Lyakhovsky Islands, where they made an inventory of many areas. In
1913, returning to the east after the discovery of Severnaya Zemlya,
the ships sailed north of the Novosibirsk Islands and opened a new
island, giving it the name of Vilkitsky. In 1914, following from
Wrangel Island to the west, "Vaigach" approached another island not
put on the map, named after Lieutenant Zhokhov.
Geologically, the archipelago is dominated by
permafrost and underground ice. The bedrock, which is hidden under
loose Quaternary deposits and thick deposits of fossil ice, are
limestone, shale with intrusions of granites and granodiorites. In
the coastal cliffs of sandy-clay soil covering fossil ice, the
remains of fossil plants and animals (mammoths, rhinos, wild horses,
etc.) thaw out, indicating that many millennia ago the climate in
this area was milder. The maximum height is 426 m (Bennett Island).
The islands have an arctic climate. Winter is stable, there are no
thaws from November to April. The snow cover lasts 9 months. The
prevailing January temperatures are from −28 ° C to −31 ° C. In
July, the temperature on the coast is usually up to 3 ° C, in the
central part it is a few degrees warmer, frosts are possible during
the entire warm period, but there are no sudden temperature
fluctuations due to the proximity of the sea. The annual
precipitation is low (77 mm). The greatest amount of precipitation
falls in August (18 mm). The largest river is Balyktakh.
The
landscape of the islands is arctic tundra, lakes and swamps.
Time zone - MSK + 6 (UTC + 9).
The surface
of the New Siberian islands is covered with arctic tundra vegetation
(mosses, lichens), from flowering: polar poppy, buttercups, grains,
saxifrage, spoon grass. Of the animals constantly inhabited:
reindeer, arctic fox, lemming, polar bear. From birds - snowy owl,
ptarmigan. The abundance of reservoirs attracts ducks, geese, and
waders here in summer. The coastal areas are inhabited by gulls,
loons, guillemots, guillemots. Arctic fox used to be fished in the
archipelago.
The polar station Kotelny Island has been
operating on Kotelny Island since 1933.
Permanent military
base
Since 2012, military exercises of the Russian Armed Forces
have been held on the Novosibirsk Islands (Kotelny Island). In 2013,
military equipment and property were delivered to the islands. In
September 2014, the organization of a permanent military base in the
Arctic was officially announced.