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US to retire its only icebreaker, stranding polar research


With the United States government retiring its only Antarctic ice breaking ship, a CU Boulder researcher shares what's next for polar research.

As the National Science Foundation plans to decommission the Palmer after it returns from its last expedition this October, Ochwat shares her take on what’s at stake. Antarctica is a very special place because nobody owns the continent, and so you don't have any official territories or any kind of land ownership. In 2006, the ship went to the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula to the Larsen B Embayment, and it collected multi-beam bathymetry data, meaning it mapped the topography of the sea floor.

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