Short answers, pulled from the story.
The International Hydrographic Organization drew a line from Kabuch Point in the Alaskan Peninsula through the Aleutian Islands to Cape Kamchatka. This boundary encloses all narrow waters between Alaska and Kamchatka within the Bering Sea.
Vitus Bering, a Danish-born Russian navigator, sailed northward from the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean in 1728. He became the first European to systematically explore this marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean.
Scientists believe that during the most recent ice age, sea levels dropped low enough for humans to migrate east on foot from Asia to North America. This route crossed what is now the Bering Strait, known as the Bering land bridge.
Pacific cod, red king crab, snow crab, and sablefish form the backbone of these lucrative industries. Landings from Alaskan waters represent half the total United States catch of fish and shellfish.
Trends in carbon isotope ratios found in bowhead whale baleen samples suggest a thirty to forty percent decline in average seasonal primary productivity over fifty years. The carrying capacity of the Bering Sea is now much lower than it has been in the past due to warm water conditions and human overexploitation.