Alaska tries to resume commercial fishing in Arctic waters

Alaska is looking for ways to resume commercial fishing in Arctic waters, which was limited by an international agreement of the Arctic states and US federal legislation, goarctic.ru reports. 
The region covered by the bans was practically not used for fishing, but the melting of the ice radically changes the situation.
Back in 2009, the United States, according to the Arctic fisheries management plan, closed 500,000 square kilometers of waters off Alaska for fishing north of the Bering Strait, including the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. Such measures were supposed to solve the issue of restoring the fish population in the Arctic seas.
An additional restriction on fishing appeared in 2018, when the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Iceland, Norway and Russia signed an agreement on the prevention of unregulated fishing in the open waters of the central Arctic Ocean, which prohibits commercial fishing in the designated region.
A little later China, Japan and the Republic of Korea joined the agreements as "Arctic" states.
The agreement entered into force in the summer of 2021 and was an important step towards the preventive regulation of fishing in the Arctic. At the same time, the region covered by the ban is covered with ice for most of the year.
Initially, the agreement will be valid for 16 years, until 2037. This period will be automatically extended for another five years if the parties do not have any claims.
At the same time, over the past few years, the population of Pacific cod and pollock has significantly increased north of the Bering Strait, which has migrated massively from the south to cooler waters. There is also less and less ice in the Arctic, which makes it possible to expand the fishing zone.
Now the Alaska Department of Fisheries is looking for ways to remove the restrictions of federal legislation and an international agreement to resume fishing in the Arctic seas.
The state has already allocated three million dollars to conduct research in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. The authorities of Alaska hope that new data in connection with the melting of ice and the growth of fish populations in Arctic waters will push the US federal government to revise existing restrictions on fishing.
Recall that Russia launched commercial fishing of pollock and Pacific cod in the Chukchi Sea for the first time in 2020.

Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished