Bering Strait

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bering Strait is only 82 km wide at its narrowest point, yet that slim channel of frigid water has divided two continents, shaped human history, and sparked some of the most ambitious engineering dreams ever conceived. Stand at Cape Dezhnev on the Russian side and you can see Alaska. The distance across the water is less than a long drive through a mid-sized city. Yet for most of human history, that gap has been one of the hardest crossings on earth. Who first crossed it, and how? What happened to the people who lived on both shores when the Cold War turned the strait into a locked border? And what would it actually take to build a tunnel under these waters? The answers reach back millions of years, to the geological moment the strait first opened, and forward into proposals still debated today.

• 2. A Rift Between Worlds

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  Between 4.8 and 7.4 million years ago, the Bering Strait opened for the first time, splitting a continuous landmass into two separate continents. Scientists believe a narrowing of the strait around 900,000 years ago may have contributed to lengthening ice age cycles across the planet. The sea floor here is remarkably shallow; the deepest point reaches only 90 metres. During periods when glaciers locked up vast amounts of water and sea levels dropped, that shallow floor was exposed as dry land. The resulting land bridge, known as Beringia, stretched across both the present strait and the shallow seas north and south of it. Scientists believe it was across Beringia that the first humans entered the Americas, a theory that has remained dominant for several decades. The strait today forms the boundary between the Chukchi Sea to the north, part of the Arctic Ocean, and the Bering Sea to the south. It sits at about 65 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, just south of the Arctic Circle.

• 3. Early Crossings

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  European geographers had theorised a passage between Asia and North America from at least 1562, calling it the Strait of Anián. In 1648, Semyon Dezhnyov probably passed through the strait, but his report never reached Europe. Danish-born Russian navigator Vitus Bering, for whom the strait is named, entered it in 1728. Four years later, in 1732, Mikhail Gvozdev became the first European to cross from Asia to America. James Cook visited during his third voyage in 1778. American vessels were hunting for bowhead whales in the strait by 1847, drawn by the rich marine life that the cold, productive waters support. The strait is also home to Yupik, Inuit, and Chukchi peoples, whose cultural and linguistic ties to one another reflect centuries of exchange across the same waters Europeans were only just discovering. The land boundary between Russia and the United States runs through those waters at 168 degrees 58 minutes and 37 seconds west longitude.

• 4. Modern Adventurers

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  Captain Max Gottschalk, a German, made the first documented modern crossing without a boat in March 1913. He travelled by dogsled from the east cape of Siberia to Shishmaref, Alaska, routing through Little and Big Diomede Islands. In 1987, swimmer Lynne Cox swam a 4.3 km course between the Diomede Islands, crossing from Alaska to the Soviet Union in water measuring 3.3 degrees Celsius. The crossing earned her a joint congratulation from American president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In June and July 1989, three independent teams attempted the first modern sea-kayak crossing. One group, seven Alaskans, named their effort Paddling Into Tomorrow, a reference to crossing the international dateline. A four-man British expedition called themselves Kayaks Across the Bering Strait. The third team was a group of Californians in a three-person baidarka, a traditional boat form, led by Jim Noyes, who launched the expedition as a paraplegic. A film crew travelling with the Californians in a walrus-skin umiak was documenting material for the 1991 documentary Curtain of Ice, directed by John Armstrong. In March 2006, Briton Karl Bushby and French-American adventurer Dimitri Kieffer walked across a frozen 90 km section in 15 days, only to be arrested shortly after reaching Russia for not entering through a recognised port of entry. August 2008 marked the first crossing by amphibious road vehicle, when Steve Burgess and Dan Evans drove a specially modified Land Rover Defender 110 across on its second attempt, the first having been interrupted by bad weather. A Korean team led by Hong Sung-Taek crossed on foot in six days in February 2012, starting from the Chukotka Peninsula on the 23rd of February and arriving in Wales, Alaska, on the 29th. Between the 4th and the 10th of August 2013, a relay team of 65 swimmers from 17 countries completed the first relay swim across the strait, covering roughly 110 km from Cape Dezhnev to Cape Prince of Wales with direct support from a Russian Navy vessel.

• 5. The Ice Curtain

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  Big Diomede, belonging to Russia, and Little Diomede, belonging to the United States, sit only 3.8 km apart in the middle of the strait. For centuries the indigenous people of the region had crossed back and forth for seasonal festivals, routine visits, and subsistence trade. The Cold War ended all of that. The Bering Strait became known as the Ice Curtain, a hard border with no regular passenger air or boat traffic of any kind. Since 2012, the Russian coast of the strait has been a closed military zone. Foreigners may visit only through organised trips with special permits, and only by arriving at Anadyr or Provideniya, the two authorised points near the strait. Travellers who cross independently, even those carrying valid visas, risk arrest, brief imprisonment, fines, deportation, and a ban on future entry. The July 2012 Sea-Doo crossing illustrated exactly that risk; six adventurers associated with a reality show called Dangerous Waters were detained at Lavrentiya, the administrative centre of Chukotsky District, and permitted to return to Alaska but not to continue south along the Pacific coast.

• 6. Grand Engineering Visions

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  In 1864, a Russian-American telegraph company began preparing an overland telegraph line that would have connected Europe and America through the region. The project was abandoned when the undersea Atlantic Cable succeeded. French engineer Baron Loicq de Lobel proposed a bridge-and-tunnel link in 1906, and Czar Nicholas II authorised a Franco-American syndicate to begin work on a Trans-Siberian Alaska railroad project; no physical construction ever started. In August 2011, Russia approved a US$65-billion TKM-World Link tunnel project. If built, the 103 km tunnel would be the longest in the world. China separately considered a railroad connecting China, Russia, Canada, and the United States, incorporating a 200 km underwater tunnel beneath the strait. A 1956 Soviet proposal took a different direction entirely: Petr Borisov designed a 90 km dam across the strait that would block cold Pacific currents from entering the Arctic and draw warmer Atlantic water northward. The CIA and FBI opposed it on national security grounds, arguing it would compromise NORAD and could only be built at immense cost. Soviet scientist D. A. Drogaytsev also opposed the plan, warning that seas north of the dam and Siberian rivers flowing north would freeze year-round, and that the Gobi and other deserts would spread to the northern Siberia coastline. American Charles P. Steinmetz, who lived from 1865 to 1923, had earlier proposed removing St. Lawrence Island and sections of the Seward and Chukotski peninsulas entirely, widening the strait to 200 miles to allow the Japan Current to melt the Arctic Ocean. In the 21st century, a 300 km dam has been proposed with the opposite intention: slowing the retreat of the Arctic ice cap against global warming.