Minina Skerries

Winters are long and bitter, so the coast and the islands are merged as an icy whole for the greatest part of the year.

There is a great variety of Arctic fauna in the Minina Skerries and the whole area is part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve, the largest nature reserve of Russia.

This cold region was first explored by Fridtjof Nansen and then, more in depth, by Baron Eduard von Toll during his last venture, the Russian Arctic Expedition of 1900–1903 on ship Zarya.

Eduard Toll and Zarya's captain Nikolai Nikolaevich Kolomeitsev were quite frustrated with the navigation through the tortuous waters of these skerries.

The Zarya took a week to negotiate these complicated waters and it ran aground three times.