For people living in Arctic region global warming brings good news with a promise of opening up new fisheries. But people worry as the region remain unregulated and if the United States does not act in the next few years, rogue fishermen from other nations could begin plying areas north of the Bering Strait in the summer, looking for new, unexploited fisheries.
David Balton, the assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries at the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science, opined that there is no major commercial fisheries are in the area of the Arctic Ocean closest to Alaska. He added that global warming is increasing day by day the ice receded and the water warms which could form major commercial fisheries on the north of the Bering Strait.
.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told that it is high time for the United States to make a strong case for managing those Arctic Ocean fisheries before the ice thins enough for fishing vessels to access them in the summer without ice-breaking equipment. According to him the authority should worked on an aggressive approach to protect the Arctic.
Lisa Speer, of the Water and Oceans Program with the Natural Resources Defense Council, believe that the United States needs an aggressive, yet cooperative, approach with both Russia and Canada on the issue. David Benton, executive director of the Juneau-based Marine Conservation Alliance, informed that time is running away and it is necessary to manage Arctic Basin as Norway did in preventing illegal fishing in some parts of the Arctic Ocean to its north.
