moving even further to the east direction

Navigating towards the east direction from Greenland, we will come across Svalbard and the Arctic region of Russia.  Going east even further, we will reach the Arctic region of the West.  In this case, by just moving east, we can reach both the Arctic regions of the Western hemisphere and the Eastern hemisphere.  Seems amazing.  We can also do that by just moving west.  We now have a conjecture that the Earth is an oblate spheroid.  If we consider more possibilities in the navigation, then we might ultimately prove that the Earth is an oblate spheroid as well.  At least in this level of abstraction, that's the way how we prove things mathematically.

After the Russian Arctic region, we will encounter the American and the Canadian Arctic region.  It can be called the North American Arctic region in general, but since there's no South American Arctic region, it's valid to call it simply the American Arctic region.  That's ambiguous though because something "American" usually refer to the United States of America, probably because of the last word in the country name.

If you're looking for islands, then there are many of them at the Canadian Arctic region.  That's 36,563 islands, and three of them fall into the top 10 largest islands of the world.  Based on history, it seems that Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa have captured the interest of the polar expeditions more.  Perhaps the Canadian Arctic has more difficult topographic features than the Russian Arctic, or probably Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa was more accessible to European countries.  About the topographic features, think about the strong tidal currents on the narrow passages between the islands, rugged terrain, and then glaciers.  However, there were these so-called "Northwest Passage" expeditions, but they were more of a search for a possible trade route.  The first recorded successful navigation of the Northwest Passage is that of Roald Amundsen, but before that, there were three major expeditions from John Franklin.  Then, these were followed by expeditions in search of John Franklin.  It was indeed challenging to navigate the Northwest Passage because of the polar ice packs.  Even during the recent times, the ice packs prevented regular shipping most of the year, but times have changed.  The Northwest Passage has more navigable waterways right now because of reduced pack ice.  It's good news for the shipping business, but beyond that, this is a sign of an environmental problem.


View Northwest Passage in a larger map

Given the increasing importance of the Northwest Passage, or rather Northwest Passages, it's not surprising to know that there are sovereignty issues on these waters. Looking at the map, it is essentially within the Canadian territory, but many countries assert that these are international waters. On the Canadian side, they have mentioned environmental concerns on top off asserting sovereignty. I think that it is really something, at least environmentally speaking.

View 2013 Into the Northwest Passage in a larger map