Alaska Is The Only State In America That Borders Three Seas
By Megan McDonald|Updated on December 21, 2022(Originally published December 15, 2022)
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Megan McDonald
Author
Megan McDonald is a writer, photographer, and owner of humu media, an Alaska-based digital media agency. She spends her free time traveling with her husband and daughter around the US and the world.
Alaska is known for many incredible geographical superlatives, like holding the title as the largest state in America, and having more coastline than all of the rest of the states combined! The state is a wild and breathtaking expanse of natural beauty and it has much of the remaining untouched land in the United States. One particularly interesting fact about Alaska’s geography is that Alaska borders three seas: the Beaufort Sea, Bering Sea, and the Chukchi Sea.
Because Alaska has an incredible 6,640 miles of coastline, it should come as no surprise that it borders three seas.
In fact, it also borders the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, as well. Not to brag. The entire Arctic Ocean is comprised of five different seas, and two of those seas are on Alaska's borders. This enormous state covers a lot of beautiful ground.
In the winter, the water freezes up, and its not until spring that you begin to have what they call "melt ponds." This is when fresh water begins to melt, but doesn't melt enough to interact with the sea water beneath it. It provides a stunning visual and you can walk out onto them (at your own risk) to experience this natural wonder firsthand.
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Many polar bears live on the pack ice on the Chukchi Sea. And they're hopefully all having as much fun as this one.
There is so much sea ice that the waters are only navigable about four months out of the year. The Chukchi Sea is about 240,000 square miles large. It takes a seasoned professional to navigate these waters.
It lies almost directly north to slightly northwest of Alaska, and is frozen almost the entire year. Even though sea ice makes up the majority of its 69,000 square miles, the area is populated with plankton, many species of fish, and is a major habitat for both polar bears and beluga whales! Natural truly can thrive in the most hostile of environments.
This stunning, frozen sea is also a large resource of gas and petroleum.
Many of the communities along the shoreline have jobs in the oil and gas industry. Although there may be conflicting opinions about how oil is acquired and processed, fishing is done much more sustainably in this area. The only seal and whale fishing are done locally and only practiced in the small villages. This means there is no overfishing in the area, and the population of sea creatures is strong and intact. This is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to manage fishing trade.
In beautiful places like Dutch Harbor, you'll actually have strip narrows of land that bridge two different bodies of water, almost like islands.
This spot in Unalaska straddles the Bering Sea and Pacific Ocean. Alaska has incredible geography that contributes to great marine biodiversity within its waters. From this viewpoint it looks like a lush fantasyland where you can experience many seasons at once from the snowcapped mountains to the green and thriving forests below. Alaska truly has an otherworldly and unique landscape.
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea located inside the Pacific Ocean. It is also located between Alaska and Russia, specifically between the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
This sea is famous for the "Bering land bridge," which scientists believed was a strip of land that was shallow enough for humans to cross on foot from Asia to North America during the most recent ice age. In that way we get a peak into our own evolutionary and migratory past through this small strip of land. This sea is a huge spot for marine wildlife, with over 10 whale species living there, and it's the home to over 20 million birds. There are also polar bears, sea lions, walrus, and more! If humans did cross on this passage, they certainly weren't alone.
This is just a small taste of what the waters surrounding the great state of Alaska look like. You can see the Bering Sea from this inn in Alaska if you’d like to get a firsthand experience from a comfortable vantage point. Other waterways you may want to avoid due to mysterious happenings and disappearances in and around them. Did you know that Alaska borders three seas? Have you visited them all? Let us know in the comments below!
