SEA OF OKHOTSK

Sea of Okhotsk: translation

Part of the western Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Okhotsk is bounded in the north by the Russian territories ofKhabarovskandMagadan, theKamchatkaPeninsula in the east,SakhalinIsland in the west, and theKuril Islandsand the Japanese island of Hokkaido in the south. It connects to the Sea of Japan via the Strait of Tartary and the La Pérouse Strait. The sea has a surface area of 1,528,000 square kilometers. Due to the predominance of Russian coastline along the sea’s basin, Moscow historically treated the body of water as a “Russian lake,” and continues to maintain the Sea of Okhotsk as anavalbastion of Russia’s Pacific Ocean Fleet. Due to its low salinity from the Amur River’s discharge, the sea is prone to freezing in the winter. The sea is of particular importance to Russia’sfishing industry, and beginning in the 1990s, Russia sought to ban commercial fishing in certain areas of the sea, creating disputes withChina,Poland, and other states. The seabed was recently discovered to contain approximately 3.5 billion tons of hydrocarbons.