Chukchi Sea ( rus, Чуко́тское мо́ре, r=Chukotskoye more, p=tɕʊˈkotskəjə ˈmorʲɪ), sometimes referred to as the Chuuk Sea, Chukotsk Sea or the Sea of Chukotsk, is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the Long Strait, off Wrangel Island, and in the east by Point Barrow, Alaska, beyond which lies the

Beaufort Sea The Beaufort Sea (; french: Mer de Beaufort, Iñupiaq: ''Taġiuq'') is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Fr ...

. The Bering Strait forms its southernmost limit and connects it to the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Ameri ...

and the Pacific Ocean. The principal port on the Chukchi Sea is Uelen in Russia. The

International Date Line The International Date Line (IDL) is an internationally accepted demarcation on the surface of Earth, running between the South and North Poles and serving as the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific O ...

crosses the Chukchi Sea from northwest to southeast. It is displaced eastwards to avoid Wrangel Island as well as the

Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Chukotka (russian: Чуко́тка), officially the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug,, ''Čukotkakèn avtonomnykèn okrug'', is the easternmost federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia. It is an autonomous okrug situated in the Russian ...

on the Russian mainland.

Geography

The sea has an approximate area of and is only navigable about four months of the year. The main geological feature of the Chukchi Sea bottom is the

Hope Basin The Hope Basin is a geological feature of the Chukchi Sea Shelf. It lies off the Chukchi Sea coast of Alaska. Its area extends from the outer continental shelf of the Seward Peninsula for about westwards off the coast of Chukotka towards Wrangel ...

, which is bound to the northeast by the Herald Arch. Depths less than occupy 56% of the total area. The Chukchi Sea has very few islands compared to other seas of the Arctic. Wrangel Island lies at the northwestern limit of the sea, Herald Island is located off Wrangel Island's Waring Point, near the northern limit of the sea. A few small islands lie along the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. The sea is named after the Chukchi people, who reside on its shores and on the Chukotka Peninsula. The coastal Chukchi traditionally engaged in fishing, whaling and the hunting of walrus in this cold sea. In Siberia places along the coast are: Cape Billings, Cape Schmidt,

Amguyema River The Amguema (russian: Амгуэ́ма, ckt, Оʼмваам, O'mvaam; in its upper course Вульвывее́м, VulvyveyemCape Vankarem, the large

Kolyuchinskaya Bay Kolyuchin Bay (russian: Колючинская губа; ''Kolyuchinskaya guba'') is a large bay in the Chukchi Sea on the northern shore of the Chukotka Peninsula, Russia. Administratively this bay belongs to the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of ...

Neskynpil'gyn Lagoon The Neskynpil'gyn Lagoon (Russian: Лагуна Нэскэнпильгын) is a shallow coastal lake in the Chukchi Sea at the northern shore of the Chukotka Peninsula, Russia. to the east is Kolyuchinskaya Bay and west, Cape Serdtse-Kamen. ...

Cape Serdtse-Kamen Cape Serdtse-Kamen (russian: мыс Сердце-Камень, literally translated as "Cape Heart-Stone") is a headland on the northeastern coast of Chukotka, Russian Federation. It is about 140 km west of Cape Dezhnev, 120 km east of K ...

Enurmino Enurmino (russian: Энурмино; Chukchi: , ''Innurmin''; Yupik language: АнушпикV.V. Leontev and K.A. Novikova, ''Топонимический словарь северо-востока СССР'' (''Toponymic Dictionary of the Northea ...

Chegitun River The Chegitun (russian: Чегитун) is a river located in the Chukotka Peninsula in Far East Siberia. It is the easternmost river flowing into the Chukchi Sea from the Siberian side, which makes it the easternmost significant river of the Eura ...

, Inchoun, Uelen and Cape Dezhnev. In Alaska, the rivers flowing into the Chukchi Sea are the Kivalina, the Kobuk, the Kokolik, the Kukpowruk, the Kukpuk, the Noatak, the Utukok, the Pitmegea, and the Wulik, among others. Of rivers flowing in from its Siberian side, the Amguyema, Ioniveyem, and the Chegitun are the most important.

Extent

The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the "Chuckchi Sea" as follows: Common usage is that the southern extent is further south, at the narrowest part of the Bering Strait which is on the

66th parallel north The 66th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 66 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane, about 61 km south of the Arctic Circle. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Asia and North America. This latitude also roughly ...

Chukchi Sea Shelf

The Chukchi Sea Shelf is the westernmost part of the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

of the United States and the easternmost part of the continental shelf of Russia. Within this shelf, the Chukchi Corridor acts as a passageway for one of the largest marine mammal migrations in the world. Species that have been documented migrating through this corridor include the

bowhead whale The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus'') is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and the only living representative of the genus ''Balaena''. They are the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and subarctic waters, ...

, beluga whale, Pacific walrus, and

bearded seal The bearded seal (''Erignathus barbatus''), also called the square flipper seal, is a medium-sized pinniped that is found in and near to the Arctic Ocean. It gets its generic name from two Greek words (''eri'' and ''gnathos'') that refer to its h ...

History

In 1648, Semyon Dezhnyov sailed from the Kolyma River on the Arctic to the Anadyr River on the Pacific, but his route was not practical and was not used for the next 200 years. In 1728, Vitus Bering and in 1779, Captain

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...

entered the sea from the Pacific. On 28 September 1878, during Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's expedition that made the whole length of the

Northeast passage The Northeast Passage (abbreviated as NEP) is the shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Russia. The western route through the islands of Canada is accordingly called the Northwest Passage (N ...

for the first time in history, the steamship ''Vega'' got stuck in fast ice in the Chukchi Sea. Since further progress for that year was impossible, the ship was secured in winter quarters. Even so, members of the expedition and the crew were aware only a few miles of ice-blocked sea lay between them and the open waters. The following year, two days after ''Vega'' was released, she passed the Bering Strait and steamed towards the Pacific Ocean. In 1913, ''Karluk'', abandoned by expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson, drifted in the ice along the northern expanses of the Chukchi Sea and sank, crushed by ice near Herald Island. The survivors made it to Wrangel Island, where they found themselves in a hopeless situation. Then Captain Robert Bartlett walked hundreds of kilometers with Kataktovik, an Inuit man, on the ice of the Chukchi Sea in order to look for help. They reached Cape Vankarem on the Chukotka coast, on April 15, 1914. Twelve survivors of the ill-fated expedition were found on Wrangel island nine months later by the ''King & Winge'', a newly built Arctic fishing schooner. In 1933, the steamer ''Chelyuskin'' sailed from Murmansk, east bound to attempt a transit of the Northern Sea Route to the Pacific, in order to demonstrate such a transit could be achieved in one season. The vessel became beset in heavy ice in the Chukchi Sea, and after drifting with the ice for over two months, was crushed and sank on 13 February 1934 near Kolyuchin Island. Apart from one fatality, her entire complement of 104 was able to establish a camp on the sea ice. The Soviet government organized an impressive aerial evacuation, under which all were rescued. Captain Vladimir Voronin and expedition leader Otto Schmidt became heroes. Following several unsuccessful attempts, the wreck was located on the bed of the Chukchi Sea by a Russian expedition, Chelyuskin-70, in mid-September 2006. Two small components of the ship's superstructure were recovered by divers and were sent to the ship's builders, Burmeister & Wain of Copenhagen, for identification. In July 2009, a large mass of organic material was found floating in the sea off the northwest Alaskan coast. Analysis by the U.S. Coast Guard has identified it as a large body of algal bloom. On 15 October 2010, Russian scientists opened a floating polar research station in the Chukchi Sea at the margin of the Arctic Ocean. The name of the station was Severny Polyus-38 and it was home to 15 researchers for a year. They conducted polar studies and gathered scientific evidence to reinforce Russia's claims to the Arctic.

Fauna

Operational Navigation Chart C-8, 2nd edition

The polar bears living on the pack ice of the Chukchi Sea are one of the five genetically distinct Eurasian populations of the species.

Phytoplankton

In 2012, scientists from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory published findings describing the discovery of the largest-known oceanic

phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'. Ph ...

algal bloom in the world. The findings were unexpected as it was previously believed that the plankton grows only after the seasonal ice melt, yet some algae was discovered under several metres of intact sea ice. Anderson et al 2021 documents two cyst beds of the dinoflagellate ''

Alexandrium catenella ''Alexandrium catenella'' is a species of dinoflagellates. It is among the group of ''Alexandrium'' species that produce toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, and is a cause of red tide. ‘’Alexandrium catenella’’ is observed in ...

'' in Ledyard Bay and

Barrow Canyon Barrow Canyon is a submarine canyon that straddles the boundary between the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Compared to other nearby areas and the Canada Basin, the highly productive Barrow Canyon supports a diversity of marine animals and invertebra ...

within the Chukchi sea. Although the cyst beds consist of ''A. catenella'' in a dormant state, if environmental conditions are right, they can germinate and create harmful algal blooms. In its active state, ''A. catenella'' produces saxitoxin, a potent

neurotoxin Neurotoxins are toxins that are destructive to nerve tissue (causing neurotoxicity). Neurotoxins are an extensive class of exogenous chemical neurological insultsSpencer 2000 that can adversely affect function in both developing and mature ner ...

that is responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) if consumed. The toxin can bioaccumulate through the food-chain and poses a threat to local communities that rely on the marine food web for sustenance. The total area of the cyst beds is 145,600 km², comparable to the area of the state of Iowa. These beds are six times larger than previously reported beds in other areas, and cyst concentration in the sediment is among the highest globally. Germination can only occur in the upper few millimeters of a bed, as cysts must be in oxic conditions to enter their more active life stage in which reproduction is possible. At bottom water temperatures of approximately 3 °C, ''A. catenella'' cysts take approximately 28 days to germinate, and at bottom water temperatures of 8°, the germination time is shortened to 10 days. In situ blooms in 2018 and 2019 have been attributed to these cyst beds and occurred in the months of July and August. With warmer summer water temperatures and increasingly destabilized oceanic currents associated with climate change, bloom initiation has been advanced by three weeks over the last two decades, and the time window for harmful surface blooms has been extended.

Oil and gas resources

The Chukchi shelf is believed to hold oil and gas reserves as high as . Several oil companies have competed for leases on the area, and on 6 February 2008, the U.S. government announced the successful bidders would pay US$2.6 billion for extraction rights. The auction drew considerable criticism from environmentalists. In May 2015, the

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management gave a conditional approval for

Shell Oil Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yor ...

to drill in shallow ( deep) Chukchi Sea waters. In September 2015, Shell announced that it was ending its oil exploration in the region, citing tremendous cost and declining oil prices. Shell vowed to return, but eventually gave up all but one of the corporation's leases in the Arctic.

References

External links

Ecological assessment

Audubon Alaska's Arctic Marine Synthesis: Atlas of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas
{{Authority control Chukchi Sea, Seas of the Arctic Ocean Seas of Russia Seas of the United States Bodies of water of Alaska Bodies of water of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Bodies of water of Nome Census Area, Alaska Bodies of water of North Slope Borough, Alaska Bodies of water of Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska Russia–United States border Beringia