The United States and four other nations that border the Arctic Ocean pledged on Thursday to prohibit commercial fishing in the international waters of theArcticuntil more scientific research could be done on how warming seas and melting ice are affecting fish stocks.
The agreement came as anannual reporton the world’s climate — released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society — said that temperatures on the ocean surface reached the highest levels in 135 years of record keeping.
The ocean’s rising temperature, which was particularly acute in the Northern Pacific last year, has drawn fish stocks farther north. That development, along with the shrinking levels of ice, has raised the prospect of industrial-scale fishing in the once-inaccessible Arctic.
“Climate change is affecting the migration patterns of fish stocks, ”Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, said in a statement afterthe declarationwas signed in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. He said that Norway and the other coastal states in the Arctic —Canada,Denmark(on behalf of its territory of Greenland),Russiaand the United States — had a “particular responsibility” to regulate fishing that is likely to occur there.
The agreement was an interim one, and the nations pledged to begin “a broader process” that would regulate commercial fishing in the Arctic Ocean among all states whose fishing fleets might soon ply the increasingly ice-free waters. Environmental groups welcomed the interim ban but also lamented that it was not permanent.
“With this agreement, the Arctic states have recognized that the Arctic Ocean is an extraordinary environment which requires better scientific understanding,” Sophie Allain, an Arctic specialist at Greenpeace, said in a statement, “but sadly they have missed the chance to deliver the permanent protection this area desperately needs.”
Since 2009, the United States has banned commercial fishing in its exclusive economic zone off Alaska’s North Slope; Norway has a similar prohibition against its trawlers from operating in international waters.
The agreement applies to the international waters beyond the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of the five nations, an area that includes the North Pole and is larger than Alaska and Texas combined. Although much of the ocean remains icebound, the warming of the Arctic has left parts of the ocean open to ships of all kinds.
The agreement does not prohibit fishing in territorial waters, an important source of livelihood for indigenous populations across the Arctic and, in Russia, for fishing fleets that operate in the ice-free waters of the Barents Sea. Fishermen near Murmansk have noted thatcodstocks appear to be moving farther from shore in recent years.
A preliminary version of the agreement to ban fishing was reached last year, but the final approval became entangled in the diplomatic fallout from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the continuing war in eastern Ukraine.
Those tensionscast a shadowover the most recent meeting in April of the Arctic Council, the international organization founded in 1996 to foster cooperation in the region. The signing on Thursday appeared to signal a desire to not let the broader disputes derail cooperation in the Arctic.
In May, the International Maritime Organization, based in London, also adopted a series of protocols for ships passing through Arctic and Antarctic waters that included standards for ship design, safety and the discharge of garbage, sewage and other pollutants.