Spurred by increased marine traffic, efforts are afoot to create a Bering Strait Waterways Safety Committee

Tribal representatives and stakeholders from the region, along with outside commercial entities met with the U.S. Coast Guard representatives in Nome last week to discuss the possibility of standing up a Waterways Safety Committee, or WSC, in the Bering Strait region. After hours of presentation on what a WSC is and discussion over what the committee should address, who should be involved and the importance of including tribal voices, it was decided that there was interest in standing up a committee.
Noel Jones with the Coast Guard explained to the attendees that a WSC is a marine waterway transportation committee focused on safe, efficient and environmentally sound operations. “A waterway safety committee fis a forum for all of the different users of a shared waterway to come together to share information and express concerns about what is happening in that waterway,” she said.
Jones told the attendees WSC have no regulatory or enforcement authority. They also are not a form of formal tribal consultation.
U.S. Coast Guard Captain Christopher Culpepper, the commander of Sector Western Alaska and U.S. Arctic, was present at the meeting. The coast guard will help stand up the committee but will not be a voting member on the committee or in control of it. In an interview with the Nugget, Culpepper said that as marine traffic in the Bering Strait continues to grow, a WSC could help with conflicts that arise. “As more competitive usage arises in any region, you end up with conflict, certainly among human nature, but also the vessel types and the density of those vessels can cause concern sometimes,” he said.
A committee can help prevent conflict from a community forum standpoint, especially when mariners understand the impacts of their use on the waterway.
When asked whether the WSC or increased traffic heralded a new era of coast guard involvement in the region, Culpepper said that the Coast Guard is currently in the process of a big evolution, called Force Design 2028. “To that extent there are going to be more Coast Guard assets in Alaska region through the Arctic, starting with a couple of new Arctic security cutters and icebreakers,” he said. “I think there is certainly a home for at least the security cutters for now in the Arctic region, and icebreakers are destined to be here within the next few years.”
Attendees at the meeting discussed what they would want a WSC to address. Some brought up environmental hazards, others spoke about the international border and others brought up how the remote nature of the Bering Strait means that they can be hours away from help in an emergency.
Anna Rose MacArthur, Kawerak’s Marine Advocate, pointed out that the Bering Strait is unique as the only waterway connection from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. She said that the region is seeing increased international activity and domestic interest. “This area is becoming a greater target for federal development, oil and gas leasing, seabed mining, Graphite One, which is directly dependent on the port of Nome expansion,” she said. “The growing interest in the Northern Sea Route that goes over Russia, the Northwest Passage that goes over Canada – they go through the Bering Strait.”
Gay Sheffield, with the Alaska Sea Grant program, asked if a WSC might be a forum that could communicate with people on the Russia side of the strait about environmental events like oil spills, avian flu and harmful algal blooms. “There are people that are living just like we are, family members and human beings, all up and down the coast, eating walrus and gray whale, just like we would,” she said. “They’re in harm’s way at a really serious health level when we have an event going on.”
Culpepper said that a WSC would be the right forum for communicating events like the ones that Sheffield referenced.
John Waghiyi, Jr. of Savoonga talked about an incident off the coast of St. Lawrence Island earlier this month, where several vessels with hunters got trapped after sea ice blocked their way to the shore. Waghiyi said he called the Coast Guard to request help and was told it would take eight or nine hours for the helicopter to arrive. “I just needed to point that out, because we do need something concrete to help us with our indigenous way of life,” he said. “We live right in the source of the Bering Sea corridor. We know the ocean current, but in order to make it a viable program, there needs to be some consideration to have a provision in the Waterways Safety Committee for distress situations like ours.”
Kyle Watson, a member of the Aleutian Islands Waterways Safety Committee representing the salvage industry, said that from the marine salvage industry perspective, a WSC would allow him to work with best management practices when operating in the Bering Strait. “The Waterway Safety Committee allows all of the voices from the community to be able to come together and understand each other’s perspectives, what their priorities are, what things are important to each individual group,” he said. “The last place that you want to start learning that is after the incident’s already happened in the middle of the night.”
Throughout the meeting, local representatives emphasized the need to protect subsistence resources in the Bering Strait Region. Sarah Okbaok from Teller talked about how traffic near Teller’s waters would jeopardize subsistence practices. “Our people right now can go and hunt in the sea without having to worry about a ship passing by, or they can go to the coast,” she said. “But if we start having regulations on our people, it’s going to put a hardship.”
Waghiyi talked about how the Indigenous people of the region have a spiritual connection with the subsistence resources and need to be involved and engaged with the WSC. “People need to acknowledge our connection to the resources,” he said. “It’s not fabricated; it’s intertwined into our culture, history and lifestyle today.”
Captain Steve White, formerly of the Coast Guard and now Executive Director of Marine Exchange of Alaska, said that a WSC wouldn’t fix everything that’s vexing the region. He said that a WSC cannot make laws or lay down rules and is more about communication and compromise between different entities. “This is really where you say, ‘Hey, who’s on the water and how do we work together on the water?’” he said.
Sheffield said that the WSC should involve all the tribes in the region as well as non-tribal member input. She pointed out that a WSC for the Bering Strait would have to rely heavily on the local working knowledge of the region. “I just hope that whatever happens, however this is organized, the Bering Strait region has really good representation,” she said.
Culpepper acknowledged that a Bering Strait WSC would have to be customized for the local environment but reminded the attendees that the Bering Strait is a shared waterway.  “There may be a lot of disdain or lack of appreciation for the commercial traffic, because it impacts or impedes fisheries, but there are other goods and services that are brought into the region through those means,” he said. “The clothes we’re wearing, the eyeglasses, the shoes, desks, tables, chairs and the fuel you put into your snow machines and boats and trucks and cars and ATVs, those are all the same waterway users that we have to try and balance.”
“There needs to be functional representation,” he added, “Operators that are moving from one region to the next ought to be participants in this committee.”
Kaare Sikuaq Erickson of Arctic Watch and a member of the Native Village of Unalakleet pointed out to those in attendance from outside the region that the Bering Strait is rich in cultural diversity and a crossroads of continents. “The thing is that in our region we have such deep culture diversity, and each village speaks for themselves,” he said. “That’s what’s unique about this region, it’s true in other regions as well, but you do have a sense of a little bit more autonomy.”
He pointed out that due to that diversity of communities, communicating WSC guidance to the entities across the region would be full time job. “We’re going to have to find resources to do this correctly,” Erikson said. “A scary part of that is not being able to have the resources to engage with all the communities.”
Megan Onders, Chief of King Island Native Community, emphasized that there should be true consultation with tribes and marine mammal organizations. “The big question that we face is ‘How does this connect back to our hunters?’”, she pointed out. “And, ‘How are we connecting back to the purpose of protecting the marine mammals and the environment?’”
USCG Arctic Coordinator Shawn Hay said that a WSC forum would allow for different perspectives and relationship building between those perspectives. He said that a WSC would be the platform to discuss those perspectives. “This dynamic group will have some altering perspectives, and there will be conflict through discussion,” he said. “Making sure that that mutual respect is persistent throughout those engagements is where you’re going to find progress and find that that cohesion and find something that’s going to be meaningful and impactful moving forward.”
“The meaningful part is finding something valuable to agree upon or compromise on that’s going to lead to something down the future that’s better than where we’re at now,” Hay said. “Whether that’s safety or economic progress or cultural subsistence lifestyles and making sure your self-determination is respected.”
Next steps for standing up the WSC will see a smaller group of volunteers come together over the coming months to decide on the organizational structure, a charter and contacting potential interested bodies.