More than 2,000 scientists from 67 countries urged Arctic leaders, in an open letter released April 22
by the Pew Environment Group, to develop an international fisheries
accord that would protect the unregulated waters of the Central Arctic
Ocean. New maps show that the loss of permanent sea ice has
opened up as much as 40 percent of this pristine region during recent
summers, making industrial fishing viable for the first time.
“Scientists recognize the crucial need for an international agreement
that will prohibit the start of commercial fishing until research-based
management measures can be put in place,” said Henry Huntington,
the Pew Environment Group’s Arctic science director. “There’s no margin
for error in a region where the melting sea ice is rapidly changing the
marine ecosystem.”
More than 60 percent of the scientists who signed the letter,
released on the first day of the International Polar Year 2012 science
conference in Montreal, are from one of the five Arctic coastal
countries—Canada, the U.S., Russia, Norway and Greenland/Denmark.
The scientists recommend that Arctic countries work together to protect the Central Arctic Ocean, an area as big as the Mediterranean Sea, by:
