The Novo­por­tovsky per­mafrost is the world’s largest nat­ur­al fish stor­age refrig­er­a­tor, cre­at­ed by human hands. It took a whole decade to build it — from the fifties to the six­ties of the last cen­tu­ry, the unique stor­age facil­i­ty was cut out of the per­mafrost by work­ers of the Novo­por­tovsky fish fac­to­ry, most­ly spe­cial set­tlers from all over the coun­try. The author of the grandiose project at that time, a Ger­man by ori­gin, Gus­tav Beck­man was exiled to the north­ern set­tle­ment of Novy Port from Leningrad dur­ing the Great Patri­ot­ic War in 1942. The ice adits of the Novo­por­tovsky per­mafrost occu­py an area of ​​thou­sands of meters — this is a com­plex sys­tem of pas­sages and cor­ri­dors where it is easy to get lost. The per­mafrost includes 3 adits, the main tun­nel, about five meters wide, and side ones, about three meters each. In total, there are sev­en ven­ti­la­tion shafts and two hun­dred ice caves with a total area of ​​3,200 cubic meters inside. Dur­ing the year, the tem­per­a­ture inside the stor­age facil­i­ty varies from ‑10 to ‑15 degrees. Local work­ers, who are most­ly indige­nous, believe that the per­mafrost is guard­ed by Nenets gods, who are wary of out­siders.

Since its con­struc­tion and to this day, the per­mafrost facil­i­ty has remained in its orig­i­nal form — it has not been recon­struct­ed or rebuilt, and per­forms its direct func­tion — valu­able fish species caught in the Ob Bay are stored with­in the walls of the Novo­port per­mafrost facil­i­ty: muk­sun, ven­dace, nel­ma and stur­geon. The “refrig­er­a­tor” holds approx­i­mate­ly 1,750 tons of fish. Before being low­ered into the stor­age facil­i­ty, the fish is care­ful­ly sort­ed, washed and frozen. And there it is care­ful­ly stored until the begin­ning of the sum­mer nav­i­ga­tion sea­son in Yamal.