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.