Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon
In the narrow sea passage between Alaska and Siberia, there is a glimmer of U.S.-Russia cooperation despite otherwise icy relationships.
Mariners using the Bering Strait are largely abiding by guidelines and rules established in 2018 to protect sensitive areas from disturbances, according to a newly published study by researchers from the University of Alaska Anchorage and Michigan State University.
There, recommended shipping lanes and designated “areas to be avoided,” around ecologically sensitive sites, were established by the International Maritime Organization in response to a joint U.S.-Russia initiative. The IMO is an agency of the United Nations responsible for improving the safety and security of international shipping and preventing pollution from ships.
The study analyzed transit records from 2015 to 2022, using mostly data from a private company, exactEarth Ltd., that collects satellite transmissions for research and other maritime purposes. It found good adherence to the recommended shipping lanes and a decided shift away from use of territory in the designated areas to be avoided.
The attention to the new IMO-approved standards, which include some mandatory rules for certain large vessels but are mostly advisory guidelines, is a piece of good news during strained times, the study’s lead author said.
“It is really encouraging to see that having these voluntary things do affect how vessels are operating in the region,” said Izabella R. Block of UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.
Marine shipments through the Bering Strait have increased dramatically since 2010, rising from 242 in total that year to 665 in 2024, according to the Marine Exchange of Alaska. The Juneau-based nonprofit organization tracks vessel traffic and provides information to enhance safety.
While traffic has increased overall, the mix of vessels is different on either side of the maritime border. In 2024, for example, tankers accounted for the largest slice of Russian Bering Strait vessel traffic; the strait is an important passageway for ships carrying Russian liquefied natural gas to Asian markets. On the Alaska side, tugs and towing vessels accounted for the biggest slide of 2024 Bering Strait transits in 2024. The Russian side had a higher proportion of cargo- and fishing-related transits through the strait in 2024; the Alaska side had a higher proportion of passenger vessels traveling there last year, according to the Marine Exchange of Alaska’s data.
Many of those types of vessels were already using the recommended traffic lanes prior to 2018, Block said. Because of that, shifts to those lanes might be subtle. The shifts away from the designated areas to be avoided are more noticeable, particularly for cargo ships, tankers and tugs, she said.
The study also found that vessels that use the strait frequently are more likely to stick to the rules and guidelines.
“It was really interesting to see that those that transit the region more often tended to have higher rates of abiding by the policy than those that transit it, like, once out of the eight years,” Block said. That points to a possible need for more mariner education, she said.
Exchanges and cooperation, which flourished in the immediate post-Soviet era, nosedived after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and other nations imposed sanctions on Russia and excluded that nation from past levels of participation in international forums like the eight-nation Arctic Council. And even before 2022, relations between the U.S. and Russia had soured, in part because of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
But some amount of international cooperation is needed in the Bering Strait because there is so much at stake, Arctic experts say.
The strait, a little more than 50 miles wide at its narrowest point – and with only 2.4 miles separating Russiamar’s Big Diomede Island from Alaska’s Little Diomede Island – is the narrow Pacific gateway to the Arctic.
Indigenous communities on both sides of the strait have deep roots and cultures that depend on healthy natural resources.
With whales, walruses and other animals using it to pass between the Bering Sea below the Arctic Circle and the Chukchi Sea above it, the strait is a “marine mammal superhighway,” in the words of Margaret Williams, a senior fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government’s Arctic Initiative and a veteran of Alaska-Russia conservation efforts. It is also one of the key global flyways for migratory birds that spend their breeding seasons in the full-daylight summer days of the Arctic, she pointed out.
At the same time, it has become a place of new international tension.
Russia has been expanding its Arctic military presence over recent years, including in the Bering Strait region, with expanded facilities and more exercises.
China also poses some potential security concerns in the region. It has engaged in joint operations with Russia, and the U.S. Coast Guard said last week that it is monitoring two Chinese research vessels that crossed through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea off northwestern Alaska.
The U.S. may also be increasing its military presence as well in the Bering Sea and, by extension, the Bering Strait. U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and others are recommending the reopening of a shuttered U.S. Navy station on Adak Island in the Aleutian chain.
Mike Sfraga, former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and the former U.S. Arctic ambassador at large, said the adversarial atmosphere presents new dangers. Lack of communication across borders – or miscommunication – could lead to unintended disasters, Sfraga said.
“I worry about things like an oil spill in the Bering Strait, because that would devastate communities and regions,” he said at the recently convened Arctic Encounter Summit in Anchorage. He was among several experts who attended the conference held at the end of July.
John Holdren, who served as the senior White House science adviser in former President Barack Obama’s administration, said the end to most scientific cooperation and exchange has been bad for science around the Arctic, where the impacts of climate change are amplified.
“It’s been very slow, very difficult, and extremely damaging to progress on issues about pan-Arctic change, in a circumstance where Russia has the largest territory, the largest territorial water, the most permafrost, the most people in the Arctic,” Holdren said during a breakout session at the Arctic Encounter event.
Still, there are “some reasons for hope” for continued cooperation, said Holdren, who is now a research professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he holds a leadership role at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Holdren pointed out that even in the Cold War era, the U.S. and Soviet Union found common ground in the Bering Strait region and managed to cooperate on specific issues of safety and conservation. As long as war in Ukraine continues, such cooperation will be limited – but still possible, at least on the lower regional level rather than on the high-profile national level, he said.
Block said that type of cooperation and communication seems to be underway among Bering Strait mariners.
“There is cooperation. I think it’s just kind of a quiet cooperation,” she said.
A next step, Block said, could be the expansion of protections in the strait. The 2018 rules and guidelines did not include a designated area to be avoided around the two Diomede Islands, she noted. While the designated shipping lanes provide some protection for the islands, some experts have argued that establishing a formal buffer would be a logical next step toward Bering Strait maritime safety.
Block said she “fully” supports that idea, based on input she has heard from people who live on Little Diomede.
“They get so much traffic that just goes right by, and they get traffic that basically just zigzags in front of the island, like kind of killing time, to their next port,” she said. Local people say the ship traffic has changed the character of the beach, Block said, making it more pebbly than sandy.