Once, only valiant adventurers visited the Arctic Ocean. No wonder! It’s freezing! Until recent years, the sea was a sheet of thick ice.

But Arctic ice changes from decade to decade. Now the ice is melting. Ships eager for a shortcut can sail through. Fishermen from all over the world can pull up and drop a net. Nations looking for wealth can try to carry away oil from the sea.

That could mean bad news for animals that live in the Arctic. What if overfishing wipes out Arctic ecosystems? Who will make sure people who come to the icy ocean take care of the environment? Who do the resources in the ocean belong to, anyway?

To get a piece of the Arctic, countries need huge ships called icebreakers. Arctic ice has melted enough to make passage possible. But it’s not easy. Even the earliest explorers used ice-strengthened ships—wooden ships with metal added on. Now icebreakers are made of steel. Icebreakers ride up onto the ice. Their weight breaks it, clearing the way.

Icebreakers cost a fortune to build. But using them could give a nation a fortune in return. The world is watching. Who will win the race for the Arctic?

The Roarin’ Forties

Splash!

Three men just threw an object off the back of their boat into the ocean! Are they littering?

No—they’re doing just the opposite. They’re collecting data for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The little buoy they cast overboard will read ocean conditions. Knowing those conditions will help NOAA predict the weather.

But the men in the boat can’t stay long to watch the buoy float. They’re in a race—the Volvo Ocean Race. The race goes all the way around the world! The fifth leg of the race runs between New Zealand and Brazil. That leg was postponed this year because of Cyclone Pam. Then the sailors had to change their route because a huge iceberg was floating in their path!

Do you have a globe? If you do, turn it over in your hands. Smack at the bottom you should see a blob labeled “Antarctica.” All the water surrounding Antarctica has a name too: the Southern Ocean. The Volvo Race passes through that ocean. That means racers are zipping through “the roaring forties”—the area between 40 and 50 degrees latitude in the Southern Hemisphere. No land breaks the wind there.

The sailors don’t need the little buoy to tell them about the weather. They already know. It’s a gale!