1. The Charitable Public Fund for Protecting Biological Resources of the Northern Pacific (Kamchatka, Russia)

2. Pacific Environment and Resources Center (USA)

3. World Wildlife Fund (Russia, USA)

4. Wild Salmon Center (USA)

5. Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (USA)

6. Alaska Marine Conservation Council (USA)

7. Unalaska Native Fishermen's Association (USA)

8. Wildlife Conservation Society (USA)

9. ISAR-Far East (Vladivostok, Russia)

10. Kaira Club (Chukotka, Russia)

11. Magadan Center for the Environment (Magadan, Russia)

12. Public Organization "Bureau for Public Regional Campaigns" (Vladivostok, Russia)

13. Society of Eskimos of Chukotka "Yupik" (Chukotka, Russia)

14. Sakhalin Association of Fishermen (Sakhalin, Russia)

15. Far-Eastern Association of Fishermen (Russia)

16. Association of Fishermen of Kamchatka (Kamchatka, Russia)

17. Sakhalin Environment Watch (Sakhalin, Russia)

18. Greenpeace Russia (Russia)

19. Kamchatka League of Independent Experts (Kamchatka, Russia)

20. Public Fund for Protection of Coastal Ecosystems and Sustainable Fisheries of Kamchatka (Kamchatka, Russia)

21. Union of Public Organizations (communities) of Native Peoples of Kamchatka Region "YaYaR" (Kamchatka, Russia)

22. Public Organization of Lawyers and Doctors "EyeK"(Kamchatka, Russia)

23. Public Organization (community) of Native Peoples "Koyana" (Kamchatka, Russia)

24. Public Organization of Native Peoples of the Village of Razdol'ny "ALESKAM" (Kamchatka, Russia)

25. Community of Native Peoples of the Village of Paratunka "ITAL" (Kamchatka, Russia)

26. Elizovo District Association of Native Peoples of the North and the Russian Far East (Kamchatka, Russia)

27. Native Community "LACH" of Milkovskiy District of Kamchatka Region (Kamchatka, Russia)

28. Public Institution Information Center "Aborigine of Kamchatka" (Kamchatka, Russia)

29. Family Native Community "Kam-Yak" (Kamchatka, Russia)

30. Public Ecological Organization of the Village of Paratunka and Termalniy “Harmony” (Kamchatka, Russia)

 

Representatives of citizens' organizations, fishing enterprises, scientific institutes, and government agencies of Russia and the US presented papers during the conference. Participants discussed issues involving the overall evaluation of the situation and primary problems of protecting biological resources in the Bering Sea, including:

— legal aspects of marine resources use, in particular quota allocation;

— developing financial incentives for sustainable marine resources use;

— the important role of coastal fisheries and their benefits to communities;

— marine protected areas as a valuable tool in conserving marine resources and biodiversity;

— combating illegal fishing;

— increasing the efficiency of natural resource use, reducing waste;

— use of natural resources by native peoples;

— strengthening the role of public organizations, including alliances and associations of fishermen and fishermen's unions.

 

The conference participants express concern about the worsening condition of populations of a variety of seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and marine invertebrates, which together represent the unique significance of biological diversity in the Bering Sea.

The conference participants also express concern over the continually worsening condition of the natural environment, the natural resource base, and the state of fisheries management in the Bering Sea and the resulting deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in coastal communities. Obstacles to addressing these problems include factors such as weak international and national legal mechanisms regulating fisheries and other exploitative activity; inadequate resolution of the delineation of the economic zones between the U.S. and Russia based on the 1990 agreement; insufficient consideration of natural and climatic cycles in ecosystems in management planning; and others.

 

The conference participants call attention of fishermen, government agencies, and citizens' organizations of the Russian Federation and the United States of America to the following:

• the high biodiversity and unique productivity of the Bering Sea, exemplified by rich fisheries, both commercial stocks such as pollock and crab and numerous other species groups such as marine mammals, seabirds, and invertebrates;

• the close connections between native coastal cultures and the biological resources of the Bering Sea;

• the geopolitical importance of the Bering Sea as a discrete, unified ecosystem, and its position straddling the 200-mile economic zones of Russia and the United States of America;

• the exhaustion of fisheries throughout the region, such as pollock stocks and Kamchatka (king) crab in the western Bering sea and king, snow, and opilio crab in the eastern part, and prognoses of future ecosystem change in light of global climate change;

• the exceptional ecological damage caused by large-scale pelagic drift-nets and bottom gill-nets, still being employed in the western Bering Sea;

• overcapacity in the fishing industry, symbolized by supertrawlers such as the "American Monarch";

• bycatch and wasteful disposal of raw materials, including the discharge of wastes from fish processing plants and the overboard dumping of non-commercially valuable fish resulting from overharvest;

• high levels of pollution and from fishing vessels, including biological wastes, lost fishing gear, petroleum products;

• concern among some fishermen about the unresolved state of the maritime boundary between Russia and the US;

• social and medical problems resulting from limited access by native peoples to aquatic biological resources;

• destruction of subsistence resources important to native communities by the commercial fishing industry in particular areas (for example, in Chukotka's Anadyr Bay and Litke Strait);

• the concern of the Russian public about the absence of government support for developing coastal fisheries;

• the importance of learning from the experience of administrative and public fisheries management councils in Alaska as mechanisms for balancing government regulation and public involvement in resolving ecological, economic, and social problems associated with fisheries;

• the role of protected areas in enhancing the reproduction of biological resources and in providing baseline data about the condition of the environment;

• the danger of forced progress in oil exploration along the continental shelf in the Northern Pacific in absence of adequate evaluation of risks;

• the plans of the Japanese government to begin regular transport of radioactive wastes via the Northern Sea Route (through the Bering Strait) and the concomitant threat of radioactive pollution in case of an accident;

• the potential threat of non-native marine species being introduced into the region, such as rats, invertebrates and micro-organisms carried through ballast water;

• the necessity to support joint scientific projects for interdisciplinary study of the Bering Sea.

 

• provision of new opportunities for the participation of Russian and American fishers and the public in decision-making about problems of the Bering Sea;

• development of new forms and methods for public participation in fighting poaching;

• greater support for defining subsistence fishing in such as way as to provide for the livelihoods of the local population;

• prohibition of drift-nets and bottom gill-nets in large-scale industrial fisheries;

• implementation of measures that decrease the negative influence of fishing gear on harvest targets, other organisms, and habitat; such measures may include the outfitting of fishing boats with apparatus to locate and raise lost fishing gear;

• protection of jobs in traditional areas for fishermen and mammal hunters, or creation of new jobs benefiting local communities including thorough development of fish processing and small-boat fisheries;

• legislation supporting priority rights of native peoples to use aquatic biological resources for subsistence in keeping with sound conservation principles;

• completion of an Environmental Impact Assessment of commercial fisheries, particularly in those areas where traditional harvesting of resources occurs by native peoples;

• creation of coastal and marine territories of traditional natural resource use;

• mapping of biologically important areas of the Bering Sea with the goal of creating a network of protected areas with varying management regimes (including no-take zones, subsistence areas, fishing areas, and other categories) for the protection of biological diversity and the resource potential of the region;

• strengthening management in existing marine and coastal protected areas in the Bering Sea;

• to work out and approve internationally recognized criteria determining fisheries management regulations of seas and other water areas;

• to carry out regular Russian-American public conferences about the problems of biological resources in the Bering Sea;

• creation of functional informational centers that can provide the fishing community, government organizations, and the public with accurate and objective information about the condition of biological resources, problems in fisheries management, and ecological risks associated with other industrial activity such as oil development;

• development of an interdisciplinary program of joint Russian-American study and regulation of the fishing industry in the aquatic areas of the Bering Sea;

• preparation of an international Convention on Fisheries Conservation in the Bering Sea.