Nature and nations are wreaking havoc in a sloshing Arctic with overzealous map-making from concerned countries versus the faster loss of great slabs of ice before they reach the famed Shiretoko Peninsula. Hokkaidō, scene of this year's July G8 summit, is Japan's second largest island where tourists enjoy photographing and sometimes catching a quick ride on drifting blocks of ice. Within the past five years, drift ice is melting as it arrives in the Sea of Okhotsk. The sea between Russia and Japan freezes each winter into ice lily pads that ride the current to an isle, the World Heritage Site of Shiretoko. The lack of staying power for this ice deprives the area's ecosystem of necessary nutrients, temporary homes or safe havens for flocks of rare birds and imperils a vibrant tourism industry economic base for the area. In prior seasons, the frozen ice masses could last up to four months.(photo Tony McNicol)

The pursuit of those resources will be underscored this week as the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy sails north from Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday to map the sea floor of the Chukchi Cap, an area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea. The maps could bolster U.S. claims to the area as part of its extended outer continental shelf.

The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed last month what the oil industry had long suspected when the agency released an estimate that the area north of the Arctic Circle may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of
oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or roughly 13 percent of the world's total undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

The dash to stake out territory across the Arctic has accelerated since Russia sent one of its submarines last August to plant the country's flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, provoking an outcry by other nations that viewed it as an unauthorized land grab.

Earlier this month, Canadian officials at a geology conference in Norway detailed their territorial claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underseas mountain range that runs beneath the North Pole. Canada argues that the ridge is part of the North American continent, not part of Siberia, as Russia has asserted.

The Northwest Passage is on its way to becoming open for shipping, more marine life, and international strife as the phony debate over drilling accelerates the years old diplomatic debate over the "true" Arctic owners (Russia, Canada, USA) of the natural resources presumably beneath the Arctic Ocean's floor. The USGS confirms collaboration between Canada and the USA on making a shared map while Russia disputes Canada's calim because their coastline borders more of the ocean.

Melting ice is causing trauma to the polar bear community as fishing becomes precarious, with sharks and killer whales following their prime blubber meal tickets, seals. One endangered polar bear suffered the indignity of being eaten by a Greenland shark off of Svalbard, home of the Noah's Ark of Seeds. Scientific arguments range from no way from the shark experts (except, the bone found in the shark's gullet proved it) to the Norwegian Polar Institute owning up to shock and theorizing that, maybe, the bear was already dead. The same slower shark species have also shown a taste for caribou in the past. Killer whales are expanding their northern Arctic territory in the colder waters while more sharks prefer warmer waters.

Jeffrey Gallant, the  co-director of a Canadian-based shark research group, said: "There's no possibility a Greenland shark could predate a live adult white bear, unless it was injured or seriously ill."

He said the Greenland shark would not be able to afford the risk of injury, or the expenditure of energy needed to kill such a large and dangerous animal.

"There is far easier prey to be found," said Mr Gallant.