Severnaya Zemlya but currently there are no human inhabitants in Severnaya Zemlya except for the Prima Polar Station near Cape Baranov. The largest glacier in the Russian Federation, the Academy of Sciences Glacier, is located in Severnaya Zemlya. The archipelago is notable as well in connection with the ongoing multiyear Arctic sea ice decline. Until recently, ice joined the islands to Eurasia, even at its smallest extent during the late summer melt season, blocking the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. By the late summer of 2012, however, the permanent ice had reached a record low extent and open water
Novaya Zemlya due south. Anticipating the breakout, the German Task Force commander Rear Admiral Hubert Schmundt (Fig. 40) pre-positioned several U-boats near the strait’s western entrance. Six of the seventeen Allied ships exiting the strait were subsequently sunk. The badly-damaged American freighter "Alcoa Ranger" was beached on Novaya Zemlya’s west coast. Its crew found temporary shelter and were eventually rescued by a Russian vessel which took them to Belushya Bay. The Germans also damaged the Soviet tankers "Donbass" and "Azerbaijan," both of which reached the sanctuary of Archangel. Of the thirty-four merchant ships in PQ-17, twenty-four were destroyed. The American contingent alone