Benthic macroinfaunal and dominant taxa samples collected from Northern Bering Sea to Chukchi Sea, 1970-2019

As seasonal sea ice declines in much of the Arctic and reached record minima in 2012, oil and gas exploration are increasing, and additional ship traffic is also using Bering Strait, perhaps a portend of changes to come if the Northern Sea Route along the north coast of Russia becomes a practical ice-free route between Asia and Europe, reducing shipping costs significantly. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic has also become ice-free several times in recent summers, a significant change. All of the Arctic countries, including Russia, the United States, Canada, and Denmark (Greenland) are exploring the limits of their arctic continental shelves in order to advance claims under the Law of the Sea Treaty. Within this context of environmental and likely socio-economic changes, wildlife populations and human communities are adjusting to these shifts in seasonal sea ice coverage and climatic warming that has been much more obvious than at lower latitudes. Subsistence hunting patterns in the Arctic are changing, and it is also clear that many organisms, from plankton to top predators may be changing their migration and foraging patterns. Productivity is also forecast to change as sea ice declines and penetration of sunlight into open water increases. 2 For more information, see: https://pacmars.cbl.umces.edu/