Edna Clements, age 14, of Jacksonville,Florida

Is the ocean around Alaska under ice?

The northern part of Alaska is inside the Arctic Circle and its shores face the Arctic Ocean. Through the long winter night, there is no sunlight and temperatures stay below the freezing point of water for weeks on end. But the temperature must be still lower to freeze the salty water of the sea. Also, the heaving waves of the ocean tend to break up the ice as it forms.

Through part of the winter, the northern ocean is clogged with hard slabs of floating pack ice. At times fields of these icy slabs freeze together‑and wide areas of the northern sea are covered with a craggy, unbroken sheet of ice. Around the southern shores of Alaska, the winter tends to bring fields of pack ice and floating islands of frozen snow.