USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) is the United States' largest and most technologically advanced icebreaker as well as the US Coast Guard's largest vessel. She is classified as a medium icebreaker by the Coast Guard. She is homeported in Seattle, Washington, and was commissioned in 1999. On 6 September 2001 Healy visited the North Pole for the first time. The second visit occurred on 12 September 2005. On 5 September 2015, Healy became the first unaccompanied United States surface vessel to reach the North Pole, and Healy's fourth Pole visit happened on 30 September 2022.
The Krasin is a Russian icebreaker. The vessel operates in polar regions.
ARA Almirante Irízar is a large icebreaker of the Argentine Navy. She was ordered from a shipyard in Finland in 1975.
USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10) is a United States Coast Guard heavy icebreaker. Commissioned in 1976, the ship was built by Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company of Seattle, Washington along with sister ship, USCGC Polar Sea.
USS Edisto (AGB-2) was a Wind-class icebreaker in the service of the United States Navy and was later transferred to the United States Coast Guard as USCGC Edisto (WAGB-284). She was named after Edisto Island, South Carolina. The island is named after the Native American Edisto Band who inhabited the island and the surrounding area. As of 2011 there is a namesake cutter USCGC Edisto (WPB-1313). The newer Edisto is a 110-foot Island-class patrol boat and is stationed in San Diego County, California.
USS Glacier (AGB-4) was a U.S. Navy, then U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker which served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions. Glacier was the first icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crew members. When built, Glacier had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship. Glacier was capable of breaking ice up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, and of continuous breaking of 4-foot (1.2 m) thick ice at 3 knots.
Aurora Australis was an Australian icebreaker. Built by Carrington Slipways and launched in 1989, the vessel is owned by P&O Maritime Services. It was regularly chartered by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) for research cruises in Antarctic waters and to support Australian bases in Antarctica.
The King Sejong Station is a research station for the Korea Antarctic Research Program that is named after King Sejong the Great of Joseon (1397–1450).
Xue Long is a Chinese icebreaking research vessel. Built in 1993 at Kherson Shipyard in Ukraine, she was converted from an Arctic cargo ship to a polar research and re-supply vessel by Hudong–Zhonghua Shipbuilding of Shanghai by the mid-1990s. The vessel was extensively upgraded in 2007 and 2013.
YWAM Liberty is the former L'Astrolabe, a French icebreaking research vessel which was used to supply the Dumont d'Urville research station in Antarctica. The vessel made regular voyages between Hobart and the Dumont D'Urville research station for fifteen years and was replaced by a new icebreaker bearing the same name in 2017.
S. A. Agulhas is a South African ice-strengthened training ship and former polar research vessel. She was built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Shimonoseki, Japan, in 1978. S. A. Agulhas was used to service the three South African National Antarctic Programme research bases, Gough Island, Marion Island in the Southern Ocean and SANAE IV in Antarctica, as well as various research voyages.
HMS Protector is a Royal Navy ice patrol ship built in Norway in mid 2000. As MV Polarbjørn she operated under charter as a polar research icebreaker and a subsea support vessel. In 2011, she was chartered as a temporary replacement for the ice patrol ship HMS Endurance and was purchased by the British Ministry of Defence in early September 2013. As DNV Ice Class 05 the vessel can handle first year ice up to 0.5 metres (20 in).
MV Akademik Shokalskiy is an Akademik Shuleykin-class ice-strengthened ship, built in Finland in 1982 and originally used for oceanographic research. In 1998 she was fully refurbished to serve as a research ship for Arctic and Antarctic work; she is used also for expedition cruising. She is named after the Russian oceanographer Yuly Shokalsky.
The Jang Bogo Station in Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica is a permanent South Korean research station. It is the second base of South Korean Antarctic research mission, and the first that is located in mainland Antarctica. Completed in February 2014, the station houses 23 people in winter and 62 in summer in a 4000 square-metre building with three wings, and is one of the larger permanent bases in Antarctica.
S. A. Agulhas II is a South African icebreaking polar supply and research ship owned by the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries. She was built in 2012 by STX Finland Rauma shipyard in Rauma, Finland, to replace the ageing S. A. Agulhas, which was retired from Antarctic service in April 2012. Unlike her predecessor, S. A. Agulhas II was designed from the beginning to carry out both scientific research and supply South African research stations in the Antarctic.
The Sparta is a 48-metre (157-foot) Russian-flagged fishing trawler and refrigerator ship.
Hong Kum Lee is an Antarctic researcher, best known for work as the Director General of the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI).
Vasiliy Golovnin is a Russian Project 10620 icebreaking cargo ship built in 1988 in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and named after the Russian navigator, vice admiral Vasily Golovnin (1776—1831). The vessel is operated by Russia's Far East Shipping Company (FESCO).
Established in 2004, the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) is the lead agency for South Korea's national polar programme for the Arctic and the Antarctic and an advisor to the Government of South Korea. Its research projects have focused on biodiversity, climate change and geological evolution. The Institute participates in fora such as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs, the International Arctic Science Committee and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). KOPRI researchers and support staff operate on the icebreaker Araon, on campus at the Korea University of Science and Technology and in the country's three research stations — King Sejong and Jang Bogo in Antarctica, and Dasan at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. KOPRI sits within South Korea's Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. Through international collaboration, KOPRI researches have undertaken studies in Alaska and Canada.
South Korea 