Bering Sea Dispute

Dispute between the U.S. and Britain (and Canada) over the international status of the Bering Sea.

In an attempt to control seal hunting off the Alaskan coast, the U.S. in 1881 claimed authority over the Bering Sea and the right to seize sealing vessels. When several Canadian ships were seized in the late 1880s, Britain protested the U.S. claim. An agreement in 1891 permitted both countries to police the area. In 1893 an international tribunal determined that the area was part of the high seas and that no nation had jurisdiction over it.

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▪ international dispute

      dispute between the United States, on the one hand, and Great Britain and Canada, on the other, over the international status of the Bering Sea (Bering Sea and Strait). In an attempt to control seal hunting off the Alaskan coast, the United States in 1881 claimed authority over all the Bering Sea waters. Britain refused to recognize this claim. In 1886 the U.S. government ordered the seizure of all vessels found sealing in the Bering Sea. Thus, in 1886, 1887, and 1889, a number of vessels were seized, most of them Canadian ships sailing from British Columbia and manned by British subjects. In answer to protests by Canada and Great Britain, the U.S. insisted that the Bering Sea had been a mare clausum (i.e., a closed sea under the dominion of the state) under the Russians and that the U.S. had succeeded to the Russian rights.

      Because of the rapid shrinking of the seal herd, an agreement was made in 1891 for both British and U.S. vessels to police the area, and a treaty of arbitration was signed the next year. This resulted in an international tribunal, which met in Paris in 1893 and condemned the U.S. seizures. It held that the Bering Sea was part of the high seas and that no single nation had jurisdiction over it. It assessed damages against the United States for the seizures at $473,151. Restrictions were placed on sealing during the summer breeding months and in the waters surrounding the Pribilof Islands.

      In 1911 the United States, Canada, and Japan signed the North Pacific Sealing Convention, which further restricted the area of pelagic sealing but awarded Canada a percentage of all the revenue derived from the annual hunt. In 1941 Japan withdrew from the agreement, claiming that the seals were damaging its fisheries, and the United States and Canada made other temporary arrangements. In 1956 representatives of Canada, the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union worked out an interim convention, which came into force the following year.

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