In 1924 Wiese studied the drift of Georgy Brusilov's ill-fated Russian ship St. Anna when she was trapped on the pack ice of the Kara Sea.

He concluded that the deviation was caused by the presence of an undiscovered island, whose coordinates he could accurately calculate thanks to the availability of the successive positions of the St. Anna during its drift.

[4] Finally the island was discovered on 13 August 1930 by a Soviet expedition led by Otto Schmidt aboard the icebreaker Sedov under Captain Vladimir Voronin.

In July 1931 Wiese led an expedition on icebreaking steamer Malygin to Franz Josef Land and the northern part of the Kara Sea.

During this expedition German airship Graf Zeppelin made a rendezvous with icebreaker Malygin at Bukhta Tikhaya in Hooker Island, Franz Josef Land.

At Rudolf Island Wiese recovered artifacts from the abandoned huts of the 1904–1905 Ziegler Polar Expedition to Franz Josef Land.

His intention was to carry out deep-sea oceanographic research in the Arctic basin, but due to fog and bad weather he reluctantly gave up and the expedition headed south.

He had also hoped to carry out oceanographic research in the then little-explored northern part of the Kara Sea, but the ice concentrations became progressively heavier until it was decided to turn back.