Arctic Ocean relate to the radioactive contamination of the Arctic Ocean from, for example, Russian radioactive waste dump sites in the Kara Sea and Cold War nuclear test sites such as Novaya Zemlya. In addition, Shell planned to drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas during the summer of 2012, which environmental groups filed a lawsuit about in an attempt to protect native communities, endangered wildlife, and the Arctic Ocean in the event of a major oil spill. On 16 July 2015, five nations (United States of America, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark/Greenland) signed a declaration committing to keep their fishing
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