The Bering Strait
(Russian: ???????? ??????, Beringov proliv
) is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the easternmost point (169°43' W) of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, the westernmost point (168°05' W) of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65° 40' north, slightly south of the polar circle. It is one of the biggest of its kind.
The Bering Strait has been the subject of scientific speculation that humans migrated from Asia to the North American continent across a land bridge formed by lower ocean levels in the distant past exposing a ridge beneath the ocean. At periods when the oceans were lower, such as when glaciers locked up vast amounts of water, the exposed ridge would have allowed humans to simply walk from Siberia to Alaska, thus populating North and South America thousands of years ago. [1]
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BERING STRAIT TICKETS
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Geography and science
The Bering Strait is approximately wide, with an average depth of .
[2] It connects the
Chukchi Sea (part of the
Arctic Ocean) in the north with the
Bering Sea (part of the
Pacific Ocean) in the south. Although the Cossack
Semyon Dezhnev passed by the strait in 1648, it is named after
Vitus Bering, a
Danish-born
Russian explorer who crossed the strait in 1728. Although considered as incorrect spelling today the area is often found spelled as "Behring Strait" in some older texts.
Population
The area is sparsely populated. The
Diomede Islands lie directly in the middle of the Bering Strait, and the village in
Little Diomede has a school which is part of Alaska's
Bering Strait School District. Because the
International Date Line runs equidistant between the islands at a distance of 1 mi (1.6 km), the Russian and American sides are counted as falling on different calendar days, with Cape Dezhnev 21 hours ahead of the American side.
The area in the immediate neighborhood on the Alaskan side belongs to the Nome Census Area which has a population of 9,000 people. There is no road from the Bering Strait to the main cities of Alaska. Air and water are the main mode of travel. There are a few roads around
Nome. However there is no regular air connection across the strait, just a few summer charter flights. This is because of a Russian policy only to allow tourists in organized tours, and with special permit to everyone.
The Russian coast belongs to
Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
Provideniya (4,500 people) and
Chukotsky (5,200 people) are the two areas located at the Bering Strait. These areas are also roadless.
Expeditions
In July 1989 a British Expedition,
Kayaks Across The Bering Strait
, completed the first sea kayak crossing of the Bering Strait from Wales, in Alaska, to Cape Dezhneva, Siberia. The four expedition members, Robert Egelstaff, Trevor Potts, Greg Barton and Peter Clark, kayaked from Nome up the Alaskan coast, round Cape Prince of Wales before crossing the Strait via the Diomede Islands. Having completed the crossing they continued north to Uelen, where they were welcomed by the Soviet Sports Committee and eventually returned to the UK via Moscow. This journey has been described as "The Everest of the Canoeing World" and was recorded in the film "Kayaking Into Tomorrow" (1989). There was a film called "Curtain of Ice" that recorded part of the crossing.
In 1998, Russian adventurer
Dmitry Shparo and his son Matvey made the first known modern crossing of the frozen Bering Strait on skis.
In March 2006 Briton
Karl Bushby and French American adventurer Dimitri Kieffer crossed the strait on foot, walking across a frozen 90 km (56 mile) section in 15 days. (although they were soon arrested for not entering Russia through a border control.)
Actor
Ewan McGregor said in an interview on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that part of the inspiration for his
Long Way Round motorcycle journey from London to New York was that, when viewed on a map, the gap between Russia and the USA across the Bering Strait was in fact very small. McGregor and his team ultimately crossed the strait with their motorcycles loaded onto a
Magadan Airlines plane, flying from
Magadan, Russia to
Anchorage, Alaska.
In 1987 swimmer
Lynne Cox swam the two miles (3 km) between the
Diomede Islands from Alaska to the Soviet Union in 40 °F (+4 °C) water during the last years of the Cold War.
August 2008 marked the first ever crossing of the Bering Strait using an amphibious road going vehicle. The specially modified Land Rover Defender 110 converted to amphibious use by Protection and Performance (www.ppcages.com) was driven by Steve Burgess and Dan Evans across the straits on its second attempt following the interruption of the first one due to bad weather. The full story can be found here: http://www.capetocape.org.uk/
Bridge or tunnel
Suggestions have been made for the construction of a
bridge, the
Bering Strait bridge, between
Alaska and
Siberia. An alternative connection would be a
tunnel underneath the strait, the
TKM-World Link being the most recent such proposal. The construction of such a bridge or tunnel would face unprecedented engineering, political, and financial challenges, and to date, no government has authorized the start of any planning or construction.
A competition was announced February 10, 2009 for the design of a bridge across the Strait via the Diomede Islands. The winners were announced June 11, 2009
Dam or threshold
In September 2008
[3] a plan was published discussing a complete or partial close off of the Bering Strait, either by building a dam or a threshold, both possibly influencing sea ice conditions in the
Arctic. The proposed
Diomede Threshold
would make use of the
salinity gradient of water currents through the Bering Strait, allowing only relatively sweet waters from the Alaskan river
Yukon to flow through the strait. The third option would be the
St. Lawrence Dam connecting
St. Lawrence Island, 186 mi (300 km) south of the Bering Strait, to mainland Alaska and Siberia. This is not the first time a dam or threshold has been discussed; the Soviet Union considered the possibility of building one, mostly to improve sea ice conditions in the Arctic.
The "Ice Curtain" border
During the
Cold War, the Bering Strait marked the border between the
United States and the
Soviet Union. The island of
Big Diomede in the USSR was (and is) only 2.4 mi (4 km) from the island of
Little Diomede in the USA. Traditionally, the indigenous peoples in the area had frequently crossed the border back and forth for "routine visits, seasonal festivals and subsistence trade", but were prevented from doing so during the Cold War
[4]. The border became known as the "Ice Curtain"
[5]. In 1987, American swimmer
Lynne Cox symbolically helped ease tensions between the two countries by swimming across the border
[6] and was congratulated jointly by
Ronald Reagan and
Mikhail Gorbachev.
References
- World History: Patterns of Interaction
- It is only {{convert|53|mi|km}} wide, and at its deepest point is only {{convert|300|ft|m}} in depth. [1]
- Diomede Crossroads - Saving the North Pole? Thoughts on plausibility
- State of Alaska website
- "Lifting the Ice Curtain", Peter A. Iseman, ''New York Times'', October 23, 1988
- "Swimming To Antarctica", CBS News, September 17, 2003