Paul Ruzycki News

At the edge of the ice blanketing part of the Arctic Ocean, the ice looked sickly. Where thick sheets of ice once sat atop the water, now a layer of soft, spongey slush slid and bobbed atop the waves.From the deck of a research ship under a bright, clear sky, “ice pilot” Paul Ruzycki mused over how quickly the region was changing since he began helping ships spot and navigate between icebergs in 1996.“Not so long ago, I heard that we had 100 years before the Arctic would be ice free in the summer,” he said. “Then I heard 75 years, 25 years, and just recently I heard 15 years.

Twenty-eight Greenpeace International activists, as well as a freelance photographer and a freelance videographer, were taken to the Lenin district court in Murmansk in handcuffs, where they were placed in a cage and provided inadequate translators. Of the 30, a total of 22 were remanded in custody for two months pending an investigation into piracy charges, while eight were detained for three days pending a new hearing. “These detentions are like the Russian oil industry itself, a relic from an earlier era.