Scientists are just beginning to learn about the many species in the remote, deep waters of the polar oceans. Corals, for example, are not limited to the warm, shallow waters of the tropics. They also exist in many cold, deep waters all over the world, including Arctic and sub-Antarctic waters. Coral reefs are marine ridges or mounds, which have formed over millennia as a result of the deposition of calcium carbonate by living organisms, predomin...

The land mass in the Arctic - Greenland and parts of Canada, Alaska, Russia and the Nordic countries - surrounds the Arctic Ocean. In the low Arctic, down to the temperate regions, the taiga coniferous forests represents a vast band of deep forests. North of the taiga, the tundra of the Arctic - with low vegetation, shrubs and various degrees of permafrosts spreads out. Beyond the tundra, there might be barren regions with only rock and few plant...

Fisheries, together with tourism, represents a major economic activity around Antarctica. In the old days whales were hunted for oil - these days fish and krill are captured for fish meal and human consumption. The areas in the Southern Atlantic are vastly more productive, and this is where most of the fish is caught. The top fishing vessels hail from Japan, Ukraine and Poland. Worth mentioning is that these figures are still small compared to th...

Areas show colours according to the original languages of the respective indigenous peoples, even if they do not speak their languages today. Notes: Overlapping populations are not shown. The map does not claim to show exact boundaries between the individual language groups. Typical colonial populations, which are not traditional Arctic populations, are not shown (Danes in Greenland, Russians in the Russian Federation, non-native Americans in Nor...

The Arctic is interesting for many types of researchers. For example, glaciologists study the ice and snow, while oceanographers look at the oceans. The ice, snow and oceans in the Arctic and Antarctic affect the global climate and are presently changing as a result of global warming. Biologists research the plants and animals, which are specially adapted to the polar regions and will be some of the first in the world to be affected by climate ch...

Despite progress achieved under the Montreal Protocol, the ozone “hole” over the Antarctic was larger than ever in September 2006. This was due to particularly cold temperatures in the stratosphere, but also to the chemical stability of ozone-depleting substances – it takes about 40 years for them to break down.