Editing Open Polar Sea (section)

==Support==
Although it is now known  that the North Pole was covered with thick ice for much of the period, the Open Polar Sea was a popular theory in the 16th to the 19th centuries, and many arguments were made to justify its existence:

* Since [[sea ice]] was erroneously believed to form only near land, if there were no land near the North Pole, there would be no ice.
* Since there is perpetual sun during the Arctic summer, it would melt all the ice.
* Russian explorers had found large [[polynya]]s (areas of open water) north of [[Svalbard]] and so there were surely other areas of open water elsewhere.
* Maury, Petermann, and other scientists who studied [[ocean currents]] in the 19th century hypothesized that warm northward currents such as the [[Gulf Stream]] and [[Kuroshio Current]] must rise to the surface and result in an ice-free sea near the pole.
* [[Extrapolation]] of temperature readings taken in subpolar regions indicated that the region of greatest cold would be at about 80°N, instead of at the North Pole.
* Migration patterns of certain animals seemed to suggest that the polar region was a hospitable place for them to live.