MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th June, 2020) Russia and China have pushed back their joint Arctic expedition, which was scheduled for the summer, by one year, to 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian academy of Sciences told Sputnik.
"This year, we are working to be ready to fully implement the expedition program in a year," the institute said.
The 2020 expedition was planned to involve 80 Russian and Chinese scientists to conduct research in the Barents, Kara, East Siberian seas, and the Laptev Sea. The expedition aimed to study the life of marine animals, look into a link between the Arctic's transformation and global climate change, and offer recommendations to optimize traffic along the Northern Sea Route.
The organizer of the expedition is the Russian-Chinese Arctic research center, established in April 2019 by the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology.
