In the case of the polar regions, Petermann's point of view deviated from most contemporary views. While many, especially the Americans and British, saw a possible passage in the Northwest, where they expected to find a passage after rounding Greenland, Petermann thought this not a viable option. But this did not prevent him from publishing many reports and maps of the American and British explorations in this area, sometimes translated from the journal of the Royal Geographical Society and other geographical societies. Though he was right in hypothesizing that the warm Gulf Stream complemented the cold Labrador Stream and that the warm stream extended far north of Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla his thesis that it warmed the Arctic needed serious revision. Although he thought it to be a deep stream he did not realize the warmth from the 300 m depth could affect surface ice as deep it rounded Svalbard and followed shelf break bathymetry eastward. On the other hand, he was wrong about the extension of Greenland. He wrote: