Laptev Sea major contaminant is associated with floating and sunken wood in the sea, due to decades of rafting activities. As a result, the phenol concentration in the Laptev Sea is the highest over the Arctic waters. Laptev Sea The Laptev Sea (; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy Cape. The Kara Sea lies to the west, the
Novaya Zemlya lost more than three-fourths of the merchant ships committed to the convoy — more than one fourth of the losses to American shipping in all convoys to northern Russia. The destruction of PQ-17 significantly affected the people dependent on supplies carried by the ill-fated merchant ships. Karlo Stajner, a Gulag prisoner in Norilsk in 1942, wrote “the German cruiser’s attack on Novaya Zemlya and the sinking of the food transports had catastrophic consequences…the population was left without provisions…supplies in the warehouses of Norilsk [were] distributed among the NKVD, the guards, and the few free civilians that lived in the town.”