Members of China's third Arctic expedition team on Monday succeeded in collecting a core sample of deep water sediments in Bering Basin, south Bering Sea.

The crew used a winch to put into sea a three-meter long cylinder-shaped sampling pipe as deep as 3,850 meters into the sea. They finally succeeded in retrieving a mud-like core of sediments after five hours of hard struggle.

Group leader Cheng Zhenbo said lab analysis of this core sample, extracted from a depth of 1.9 meter under the seafloor, may shed light on the oceanic and climatic evolution in this part of the sea over thousands of years.

Chen Jianfang, assistant to the chief scientist of the expedition team, said that as the Bering Sea and the ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean are closely linked, the study of the core sample of sediments from the Bering Sea is of vital importance to the understanding of the evolution of Arctic's ecosystem.

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2008)