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The Bering Strait
The 82-kilometer gap between Russia and Alaska, where Asia meets America and today faces tomorrow
Here two continents, two superpowers, and two calendar days come within sight of each other. The Bering Strait separates Russia's Chukotka Peninsula from Alaska by just 82 kilometers, and in its middle the two Diomede islands sit less than 4 kilometers apart, one Russian and one American, with the International Date Line running between them, so that Big Diomede is nearly a day ahead of its neighbor. In the ice ages this was dry land, the bridge by which people first walked into the Americas. Now, as Arctic sea ice retreats, it is becoming a shipping gateway between the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean.
At its narrowest the strait runs between Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point of mainland Asia, and Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost point of mainland North America. It links the Bering Sea to the south with the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic Ocean to the north. The water is shallow, mostly 30 to 50 meters deep, and is usually choked with sea ice from late autumn into spring. Big Diomede belongs to Russia, and Little Diomede, home to a small Inupiat village, belongs to the United States. The maritime boundary between the two countries follows a line set in the 1867 sale of Alaska. Ships crossing it, more each year as the ice-free season lengthens, follow two-way routes adopted by the International Maritime Organization in 2018.
During the last ice age, sea levels fell so far that a broad land bridge, Beringia, joined Siberia and Alaska, and the ancestors of Native Americans crossed it more than 15,000 years ago. The Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev probably sailed through in 1648, but the strait is named for Vitus Bering, a Danish navigator in Russian service who entered it in 1728. Indigenous Yupik and Inupiat families traveled freely across it until the Cold War, when the so-called Ice Curtain closed the border. A 1989 agreement allowed visa-free visits by Native residents of both coasts, though travel remains limited amid U.S.-Russian tensions. Melting ice, rising traffic to and from Russia's Northern Sea Route, and fragile marine ecosystems keep the strait in the plans of both governments.