Economic activity of the Laptev Sea. Laptev Sea
Cooperation between the Russian Far East and American Alaska has great prospects, and this is due to both economic and political reasons - Alaska is trying to distance itself from Washington. This opinion was expressed by the expert Vladimir Vasiliev.
Alaska and the Russian Far East need to build relationships through joint work. This was stated by the mayor of the state's largest city of Anchorage Ethan Berkowitz.
"The Russian Far East is closer to Alaska than to Moscow. Anchorage is closer to the Russian Far East than to Washington. Since we are neighbors, the more we know about each other, the better we can become," RIA Novosti quotes the words Berkovitsa.
“There are a lot of high-level disagreements right now between our governments. But when we think about these conflicts, we also need to think about what our world will look like in the future. And the more connections we can have between cities and between people the more opportunities we may have to prepare for a better future," the mayor added.
At the end of July, the 23rd meeting of the Russian-American Pacific Partnership (RAPP) took place in Anchorage. The possibility of concluding agreements on cooperation in the Bering Strait and control over the movement of ships, the expansion of Yakutia Airlines flights to Alaska, and cooperation in the oil and gas field were discussed.
In addition, the Russian Far East and Alaska have the potential to develop tourism between the regions. So says the head of the "World shopping center Alaska" Greg Wolfe. "We have direct tours from Anchorage to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in summer period. There are opportunities for cultural tourism in both directions. This is an area that has potential," Woolf told RIA Novosti.
In his opinion, the cooperation of American business with the Russian Far East is stalling due to lack of awareness. Potential partners do not know what projects exist, nor do they have information on how to participate directly in them.
Russian potential interests Alaska
This collaboration can indeed be productive, says Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute for the USA and Canada.
"The socio-economic position of Alaska, due to geography, depends on the system of external relations. This is both Canada and the main part of the United States, where oil from Alaska goes. At the same time, Alaska is part of the East Asian region, and the state of affairs in the region seriously affects this American state. Since Russia is a neighbor of Alaska, there really are prospects for joint projects. This is the development of the shelf, and, most importantly, cooperation in the Arctic," said the expert of the FBA "Economy Today".
It is important to keep in mind that the average per capita standard of living in Alaska is the highest in the United States. The reasons are obvious - Natural resources and a small population. For the further development of the state, new projects are needed, respectively, the authorities of Alaska are open to contacts.
According to Vasiliev, the statement of the mayor of Anchorage is real, it indicates the interest of the state authorities, and "you can bet on it." "Alaska, I repeat, is very dependent on external economic relations, and therefore the Russian potential for exports and imports is in the field of view of the state authorities," the expert said.
Beyond the White House
The establishment of economic ties with Russia may also be caused by political factors, he did not rule out.
"These aspirations may be related to the general mood on the west coast. California is very independent today, for example. Today, California and several other states are increasingly distancing themselves from official Washington. It is possible that the administration of Alaska also takes these sentiments into account, assuming that it is worth being on a long leash at the White House, keeping not only a geographical, but also a political distance," Vladimir Vasilyev explained.
Despite the rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing on the basis of confrontation with the West, there is a point of hidden conflict in the relations of these countries - the Far East, Sankei Shimbun writes in his article. Illegal Chinese migration to these lands worries Russians, and Chinese residents consider the territories “stolen” as a result of unequal treaties of the 19th century.
A conflict will erupt if the spark of Chinese nationalism is ignited, a Japanese newspaper warns.
The Chinese are infiltrating the Far East, where few Russians live, and suppressing them from a psychological point of view. Russian research institutes believe that in the near future the Chinese will become the most numerous nationality in the Far East region. The Chinese believe that with the help of unequal agreements that were concluded in the 19th century, part of the Far East, including Vladivostok, was taken away from them, so they are wary of the Russians.
While the heads of Russia and China demonstrate " Honeymoon» in relations as opposed to Western countries, right under their noses, a conflict flares up.
The Chinese attack Russia not in tanks, but in suits.
In July, the American company ABC News published an analytical article written by a Russian expert. According to information Russian media, a Russian government official in charge of border control, said that over the past year and a half, one and a half million Chinese have illegally entered the Far East. While the numbers are somewhat exaggerated, he says, there is definitely a significant influx of Chinese crossing the border.
According to the Carnegie Moscow Center, in 1977 there were only 250 thousand Chinese in Russia, and now their number has grown to two million people, which is comparable to the population of big city. The government organization responsible for immigration control claims that in 20-30 years the Chinese will dominate the world. Far East, becoming the most numerous nationality.
Population of the Far East federal district, which has an area twice the size of India, is 6.3 million people, which is not much more than the population of Japan's Hyogo Prefecture. At the same time, the population of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, bordering Russia, exceeds 100 million people.
Blagoveshchensk and Heihe, which are located on opposite sides of the Amur River that runs along the border, reflect the difference in the development of both regions.
Opposite a provincial town with a population of 200 thousand people stands a large modern city with high-rise buildings, the population of which is two million people.
An ABC News article notes that the Russian Far East is to China what the United States is to Mexico: these countries use their neighbors to drain population surpluses. Meanwhile, relations between Russia and China cannot be compared with relations between Mexico and the United States, where a presidential candidate proposes to build a wall to combat illegal migration. As for Russian-Chinese relations, China is superior to Russia in them, where it sends its population.
In 20 years the mayor will be a Chinese?
After the collapse of the USSR, the population of the Far East was declining. There is a serious labor shortage problem in the region. The area of abandoned lands has grown; alone locals unable to maintain all fields in proper condition.
According to a professor at the University of Chicago Loyola Mikhail Khodarkovsky, who published an article in The New York Times, over the past ten years, 800,000 square kilometers of farmland, twice the size of Japan, have been leased to the Chinese at a low price. There is a large-scale activity in the cultivation of soybeans, corn, as well as the breeding of pigs.
This year Zabaykalsky Krai, bordering China, has agreed to lease 1,150 square kilometers of land to Chinese companies, about half the size of Tokyo. The lease term will be 49 years. The price is amazing: about 500 yen per hectare per year. The Russians expressed a strong protest: According to them, in 20 years the mayor will be a Chinese.
The Russian government has passed a law allowing Russians to rent land free of charge in hopes of hastening their resettlement, but many experts fear that the post-Soviet situation could repeat itself. In the 1990s, the shares of state corporations were snapped up in the blink of an eye. As a result, only a special caste associated with the authorities lined their pockets.
The Far East cannot stand up without China, which leads to an influx of Chinese.
Professor Khodarkovsky notes: "The Russian lands along the Amur have already turned into a Chinese fiefdom."
Unrecovered lands.
As a result of the influx of Chinese, a movement for the return of the lands is emerging, but the return of the Russian territories will not be easy.
The Russian Empire, which was part of the Western forces, in 1858 and 1860 signed the Aigun and Beijing treaties with the weakened China, according to which it received the Far Eastern region. These vast territories, including Primorsky Krai, are several times larger than Japan. As a result, China lost access to the sea in the northeast of the country. These were humiliating and unequal treaties for China - as in the situation with Hong Kong, which was ceded to Great Britain after the Opium War.
In the 1960s, a territorial conflict even broke out between China and the USSR. It came to an armed clash. However, after the end cold war negotiations began on the demarcation of the borders, and in 2008 the parties reached an agreement. At present, Russia and China have no territorial problems.
Despite this, statements about the lands taken by Russia often appear on the Chinese Internet.
In July, The New York Times ran a report on Vladivostok, which has been visited by a growing number of Chinese in recent years. It is a western-type city, the name of which means "to own the East". This abandoned coastal region developed as a stronghold in the Far East.
“Obviously, these lands belonged to us. But I don’t think about returning them as soon as possible,” says a Chinese from Jilin Province. A representative of one of the Vladivostok historical research institutes emphasizes: “Chinese scientists and officials do not talk about the rights to Vladivostok, but ordinary Chinese, thinking about unfair treaties, believe that someday these territories should be returned.”
Ice cream as a symbol of the "honeymoon"
The territorial nationalism fueled by the Chinese authorities over Taiwan, Tibet, the Senkaku archipelago and the South China Sea has already gone beyond the government's intentions and turned towards Russia. Many Chinese already believe that the Far East is stolen territories.
During a summit meeting held in September in Hangzhou, President Putin presented to the head of China Xi Jinping his favorite Russian ice cream, thus illustrating the "honeymoon" in bilateral relations. Russia and China are in confrontation with Western countries in connection with the Crimea and the South China Sea, respectively, and strengthen bilateral relations.
Meanwhile, Pandora's box, fraught with the territorial problem in the Far East, is still closed. If nationalism escalates, then the ice cream is likely to melt quickly.
The Laptev Sea belongs to the group of marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. The area of the reservoir is about 678 thousand square meters. km. The volume of water reaches 363 thousand cubic meters. km. Average depth equals 578 meters, and the maximum corresponds to 3385 meters. The climate in these places is arctic, the salinity of the water is low, the ice cover lasts most of the year and only partially recedes in late summer and early autumn. The large Siberian river Lena flows into the reservoir.
origin of name
The sea is named after Russian explorers and cousins Khariton and Dmitry Laptev. They mastered this inhospitable region in the first half of the 18th century. Prior to this, in the XVII and XVIII centuries The reservoir was sometimes called the Arctic, then the Siberian, then the Lena, then the Tatar Sea. In 1883, the well-known Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen proposed another name - the Nordenskiold Sea in honor of the Swedish geographer and geologist Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld.
This name lasted until the beginning of the 20th century, when the Russian Geographical Society approved modern name, and in honor of the famous Swede they named the archipelago in the Kara Sea. The official decision on this issue was made by the Soviet government in the summer of 1935.
Laptev Sea on the map
Borders of the Laptev Sea
In the west, the reservoir is limited by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. The northernmost point is the Arctic Cape on Komsomolets Island. The Novosibirsk Islands are considered to be the eastern border, with the northernmost point on Kotelny Island, Cape Anisii. The eastern border ends at Cape Svyatoy Nos and further west along the coast of the mainland to the Taimyr Peninsula.
Coastline
The Lena River flows into the Laptev Sea and forms a vast delta. In addition, such rivers as Yana, Khatanga, Olenyok, Anabar flow into the reservoir. The coastline is indented with a length of 1300 km. It has many bays and coves. The easternmost is the Ebellakh Bay (the bay is a bay that flows far into the land, into which, as a rule, a river flows). Further to the west are the Sellakhskaya Bay, the Yansky Bay, the Buor-Khaya Bay, the Oleneksky Bay, the Anabarsky Bay, the Nordvik Bay, and the westernmost is the Khatanga Bay.
In the region of the southwestern coast there are such islands as Maly and Bolshoi Begichev, Preobrazhensky Island, Peschany Island, Psov Island, and the Peter Islands. All in all close coastline there are several dozen islands, and their total area is 3.8 thousand square meters. km. As a result of erosion, some islands are destroyed and disappear.
Sea bottom
More than half of the seabed is a continental shelf with a depth of no more than 60 meters. AT southern regions there are places where the depth corresponds to 25-30 meters. In the northern part of the reservoir, the bottom abruptly breaks down and the depth reaches 1 km or more. The maximum depth of 3385 meters was recorded in the northern part of the sea in the Nansen Basin, where the water column averages 2 km.
The Laptev Sea is characterized by low temperature regimes. They range from -1.8 degrees Celsius in the north to -0.8 degrees Celsius in the southeastern part. The temperature of the middle layers of water is 1.5 degrees Celsius. At depth, the temperature regime is colder and reaches -0.8 degrees Celsius. In the summer months, the water warms up by the sun in the bays up to 8-10 degrees Celsius and up to 2-3 degrees Celsius in the open sea.
The salinity of sea water is largely affected by ice melt and river runoff. In winter, salinity in the southern regions is 20-25 ppm, and in the north it reaches 34 ppm. In summer, respectively, it decreases by 10% and 32%.
70% of the total river runoff (515 thousand cubic km) comes from the Lena River. And the river runoff of all rivers flowing into the reservoir under consideration reaches 730 thousand cubic meters. km. Due to the melting of ice, 90% of the runoff occurs in June-September, and in January this figure is only 5%.
The tides are semidiurnal with an average amplitude of 0.5 meters. In the Khatanga Bay, they reach 2 meters. Seasonal fluctuations in the water level are 40 cm. The winds are weak, so the height of the waves usually does not exceed 1 meter. Summer in central regions In the sea there are waves 4-5 meters high, and in autumn they can reach 6 meters in height.
Climate
The Laptev Sea is remote from both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, so an arctic climate prevails. The polar night lasts 3 months a year in the south and 5 months in the north. The air temperature is below 0 degrees 11 months a year in the north and 9 months in the south. average temperature January is -32 degrees Celsius, and the minimum is -50 degrees Celsius.
In summer, the temperature in the south rises to 10 degrees Celsius. On the coast, it can rise to 24 degrees Celsius. The maximum summer temperature regime recorded in Tiksi was 32 degrees Celsius. However, in foggy weather, snow can fall in summer, and snowstorms and storms are characteristic of winter.
Although the sea is weak, but shipping is developed, and Tiksi is the main seaport. In the 30s of the last century, the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Routes was created, which was in charge of the ships cruising the Laptev Sea. The ships moved in a caravan behind the icebreaker. They transported timber, furs, and various building materials. Today, the northern route is used to deliver goods to the northern regions of Russia.
Ecology
The reservoir under consideration is considered slightly polluted. The negative impact is exerted by enterprises located on the banks of the Lena, Anabar, Yana rivers. It is from them that phenols, zinc, copper get into sea water. The administrative center of Tiksi also contributes to the pollution. A source of pollution is also rotting wood that enters the sea as a result of timber rafting. All this causes a high concentration of phenol.
The Laptev Sea is one of the most interesting, important and useful water bodies in the country. It is adjacent to the Arctic Ocean and is characterized by a low temperature and a low degree of salinity of the water. 10 months of the year the sea is covered with ice. Specific features - poor fauna and flora, a small number of people on the coast and islands within the sea, some of which can still be found the remains of mammoths.
The name "Laptev Sea" did not appear by chance. This is the merit of travelers with the corresponding surname - the brothers Dmitry and Khariton. Previously, the reservoir bore the name of Norsheld (thanks to the filing of Fridtjof Nansen), and was also called the Tatar, Lena, Siberian and Arctic Seas.
Shores of the Laptev Sea
The Laptev Sea has an area of 672 thousand km² and a volume of 363 thousand km². The maximum depth of the reservoir considered in the article is over 3000 meters, the average depth is 540 meters. The shores stretch for 1300 km and form bays and bays of various sizes. The most impressive bays include Khatanga, Yansky, the bay of Maria Pronchishcheva and a number of others.
Several rivers flow into the Laptev Sea, in the deltas of which there are several dozen islands, often subject to erosion. The most famous of the rivers flowing into the reservoir is the Lena. The most important islands include Severnaya Zemlya, Bolshoi Begichev, Maly Taimyr, Belkovsky and Faddey.
The body of water is home to approximately 40 different species of fish, most of which prefer salt water. These are grayling and whitefish, sardine and Bering Sea omul, smelt, cod, flounder and some other fish species. Many mammals live within the Laptev Sea - walruses, ermine, polar hare, polar bear, etc.
In addition to the above, there is a bird here. Among the settled birds, the snow bunting, sandpiper, snowy owl and black goose should be distinguished. The rest - wander around the polar regions or arrive from the south side. Thus, the reservoir is excellent for fishing and hunting, although both of these activities are not particularly common.
In the 80s of the last century in the area of the river. Lena formed a nature reserve. In the 90s, its buffer zone expanded significantly, due to the inclusion of the islands of the Novosibirsk archipelago into it. Now the total area of the territory exceeds 14 thousand km². This is the habitat of many fish, plants, birds and mammals, including those that can be seen on the pages of the Red Book.
Cities on the Laptev Sea
(Tiksi village)
The largest settlement is considered to be the village of Tiksi, where the Arctic sea port with the same name. This is a place of import of food, industrial goods, building materials, equipment, fuel and export of timber, lumber. About 5 thousand people live in the village. to other significant settlements includes the village of Bykovsky (519 people) and Khatanga (2645 people).
