The Bering Sea

In the waters between Russia and Alaska lies a sea so rich in wildlife and variety of coastal and subsea habitats that it is considered one of the world's most biologically-productive and diverse marine environments.

Named after Danish explorer, Vitus Bering, the Bering Sea covers over 772, 204 million square miles (2 million square km) of the northernmost region of the Pacific Ocean. Its borders are defined to the north by Alaska, the Bering Strait, and northeastern Siberia, and to the south by the arc of the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, and Commander Islands.

Extremely icy, the frigid Bering Sea can usually only be sailed by ship from June through October. It has an average depth of 5,075 feet (1,547 m), with its deepest measuring 15,659 ft (4,773 m).

Covering almost a million square miles of Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, the Bering Sea supports vast populations of fish and shellfish, birds from every continent on Earth, and countless numbers of whales, dolphins, porpoises, walrus, sea lions, polar bears, fur seals, sea otters and sea lions. It is here that spectacular flocks of seabirds suddenly take to the air from the towering headland cliffs of their summer nesting grounds while, far below, 80-foot blue whales consume several tons of krill each day along the edge of the continental shelf. Highly-endangered sperm whales, the deepest and longest diving cetacean, can sometimes be seen resting near the surface of the sea. Huge salmon runs, massive schools of pollock, and generations of long-lived halibut are migrating through deep and shallow waters. Small arctic foxes are trailing majestic polar bears hundreds of miles across the northern sea ice through brutal winter storms and hurricane-force winds. And a million Northern fur seals, spending eight months to two years at sea, are migrating thousands of miles through ocean waters to the Bering Sea islands, the very rookeries, where they were born.

Links to Learn More

Bering Sea Ecoregion: A Call to Action in Marine Conservation  Learn more >>

Ecoregion-Based Conservation in the Bering Sea: Identifying Important Areas for Biodiversity Conservation  Learn more >>

Bering Climate: A Current View of the Bering Sea Ecosystem and Climate  Learn more >>

Book: The Bering Sea Ecosystem  Learn more >>

Sights and Sounds of the Bering Sea  Learn more >>

Chukotka's Natural Heritage at a Glance  Learn more >>

Listen and watch as Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund, shares some of the great work WWF is doing in the Bering Sea  Learn more >>

Sources courtesy of: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/mmpa/, http://panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/europe/what_we_do/arctic/what_we_do/marine/bering/index.cfm

Images courtesy of: http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/bering_status_overview.html, http://assets.panda.org/downloads/chukotka_brochure.pdf, http://www.nap.edu/books/0309053455/html/index.html, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld/beringsea/, http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/np/pages/seas/bseamap.html, http://www.worldwildlife.org/beringsea_erbc/main_book.pdf, http://www.worldwildlife.org/firsthand/index.cfm