Scientists have summed up the results of Rosneft's environmental project in the White Sea

On December 10, Moscow summed up the results of Rosneft's large-scale environmental project in the White Sea, which started in 2023. The project participants repeated the route of the 1922-1926 expeditions of the Soviet hydrobiologist Konstantin Deryugin, who described in detail the flora and fauna of the White Sea. The aim of the project was to analyze age-old changes in marine ecosystems using Deryugin's methods and modern technologies, as well as to assess the impact of various factors on the ecology of the Arctic.

In the course of the work, it was established that the ecosystem of the White Sea remains stable in general. This allows scientists to consider the region as a kind of reference point for comparison with other Arctic territories, where changes are much faster.

An assessment of the environmental situation has shown that there is a stable microbial community in the waters of the White Sea. The content of heavy metals in invertebrate tissue samples is significantly lower than the established maximum permissible concentrations.

According to Alexander Tsetlin, director of the Belomorskaya Biological Station of Moscow State University (BBS MSU), scientists have obtained "amazing data" as a result of their research.

- We now understand that little has changed in the ecosystem of the flora and fauna of the White Sea over these hundred years. This is a very interesting result, against the background of the rapid changes that are currently taking place in the Arctic seas, especially if we take the Kara Sea," the scientist told reporters.

According to Alexander Tsetlin, the data from the research results are especially important in the framework of creating monitoring systems to ensure security, scientific research and economic activity in the region.

The White Sea has become an object of research for a reason. In most seas of the Russian Arctic, ice is perennial, and in the White Sea it is annual. Due to current climate changes, there is more and more annual ice in the Arctic, which means that the results of research on White are relevant for the entire Russian Arctic. Comparing Konstantin Deryugin's "census" of the inhabitants of the White Sea made 100 years ago with up–to-date data, it is possible to determine what changes have occurred in the Russian Arctic and what they were caused by - natural causes or, for example, human activity.

Among the factors contributing to the sustainability of the flora and fauna of the White Sea, Alexander Tsetlin named the special ecological system of the region under study — the deep-water part of the White Sea is occupied by very cold waters, the temperature of which has not changed and is -1.5 °C. In addition, navigation is poorly developed there and the only river in the region, the Northern Dvina, flows into it, which does not carry any new warm currents.

However, studies have also shown that the fauna of the Arctic seas is poorly understood: up to 30% of species retain an uncertain taxonomic status, and there is a lot of work ahead to revise the fauna of the Arctic seas.

Nevertheless, according to Anna Zhadan, a researcher at the project, scientists have found many species in the White Sea that Konstantin Deryugin did not find.

- But it's not because he didn't search well. It's just that the research methods have changed in many ways," said the participant of the expeditions.

According to her, new species of animals have been discovered during the research. Some of the species turned out to be finds for the White Sea, and some are really new species for science as a whole. All of them are now waiting for a scientific description – according to scientists, we are talking about classes of worms and sponges.

As the representatives of the project noted, all research during the marine expeditionary work in 2023-2024 was carried out on the research vessels Kartesh and Professor Zenkevich. The specialists took samples of bacterio-, phyto-, ichthyoand zooplankton, studied communities of benthic organisms using the same methods as a century ago.

In addition to traditional methods, scientists used modern instruments and innovative technologies during their research, including examining the bottom of the White Sea using remote–controlled uninhabited underwater vehicles and conducting a molecular genetic analysis of the detected organisms using the world's only sequencer located beyond the Arctic Circle.

In total, more than 80 specialists from the country's leading specialized scientific organizations participated in the project, including scientists from the Rosneft Arctic Research Center, Innopraktika, the MSU Marine Research Center and the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 24 project participants are students and postgraduates of the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, who were involved in field and desk work.

The project allowed scientists to obtain up-to-date extensive data on the distribution of fauna of the bottom ecosystems of the White Sea, to develop methodological foundations for monitoring the ecological state of the seas of the western Arctic with new generation technologies. All this information and modern tools for studying it are necessary for long-term planning of sustainable development of the Arctic region of Russia.