美俄将联手规范北极附近海域捕鱼

MOSCOW — The recent diplomatic thaw between Russia and the United States over the crisis in Ukraine has had little impact there, but it is being felt somewhere else — in the Arctic Ocean, near the North Pole.

莫斯科——最近，俄罗斯和美国因乌克兰问题降至冰点的外交关系出现了解冻迹象，它对乌克兰几乎没有影响，但却可以在另一个地方感觉得到，那就是北极附近的北冰洋。

Out on the Sea, the polar ice cap has been melting so quickly as global temperatures rise that once improbable ideas for commercial activities, including fishing near the North Pole, are quickly becoming realistic.

在海洋中，随着全球气温上升，极地冰盖融化的速度如此之快，曾经无法开展的商业活动正在迅速变成现实，比如在北极附近捕捞渔业资源。

The United States, Russia and three other nations with Arctic Ocean coastlines agreed last year to regulate trawling in Arctic waters newly free of ice. But the deep freeze in East-West relations after Russia’s annexation of Crimea delayed the expected signing.

去年，美国、俄罗斯，以及另外三个在北冰洋海岸线上的国家同意，对在北极冰盖新近消融的水域开展拖网捕鱼的活动加以规范。但在俄罗斯吞并克里米亚之后，迅速恶化的东西方关系推迟了预期中的协定签署。

The day after Secretary of State John Kerry met with President Vladimir V. Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi last week, Russia announced it would sign the fishing agreement.

美国国务卿约翰·克里(John Kerry)上周在黑海度假胜地索契会见了俄罗斯总统普京，第二天俄罗斯即宣布将签署这份渔业协定。

“I think the Arctic genuinely is shaping up to be the exception to the rule,” said Scott Highleyman, director of the Arctic Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “The U.S. and Russia seem to be trying really hard to keep talking to each other.”

“我认为北极地区确实正在成为一个特例，”皮尤慈善信托基金(Pew Charitable Trusts)的北极计划(Arctic Program)主管斯科特·海利曼(Scott Highleyman)说。“美国和俄罗斯似乎真的在很努力地保持相互交流。”

The fishing deal was negotiated in February 2014 among Russia, Norway, Canada, the United States and Denmark, which controls Greenland, where the talks were held.

这个渔业协定的谈判是2014年2月在俄罗斯、挪威、加拿大、美国和丹麦之间举行的，会谈地点选在丹麦管辖的格陵兰岛。

It was expected to be signed within weeks of the meeting, but the timing turned out to be dismal when, that month, street protesters in Kiev, Ukraine, overthrew President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a Russian ally, and most East-West cooperation froze.

协定原计划在会议召开后的几周内签署，但糟糕的是，那个月在乌克兰基辅发生了街头示威，俄罗斯的盟友、乌克兰总统维克托·F·亚努科维奇(Viktor F. Yanukovych)被推翻，结果东西方之间的合作大多数都中止了。

As recently as April, ill-will over Ukraine carried into a meeting of the Arctic Council, an international organization created to foster cooperation in the region, despite diplomats’ appeals to focus on the melting ice instead.

就在不久前的今年4月，尽管外交官们呼吁大家把目光集中在融冰上，乌克兰问题引发的敌意，还是蔓延到了北极理事会(Arctic Council)的一场会议中。北极理事会是一个国际组织，成立宗旨是促进各国在北极的合作。

“There is no room here for confrontation or for fearmongering,” said Russia’s envoy to the meeting, Sergei Y. Donskoi, the minister of environment and natural resources.

“不能在这里搞对抗或者危言耸听，”这个会议的俄罗斯特使、该国环境和自然资源部长谢尔盖·Y·顿斯科伊(Sergei Y. Donskoi)说。

The United States opened negotiations on the fishing accord six years ago, after concluding that enough of the polar ice cap melted regularly in the summertime that an agreement to regulate commercial fishing near the North Pole was warranted.

六年前，美国开启了这个渔业协定的谈判，因为美国发现有足够多的极地冰盖在夏季定期融化，需要一项协定来规范北极附近的商业捕鱼活动。

The accord would regulate commercial harvests in an area far offshore — in the so-called doughnut hole of the Arctic Ocean, a Texas-size area of international water that includes the North Pole and is encircled by the exclusive economic zones of the coastal countries.

该协定将对一片远离海岸的水域开展的商业捕鱼活动加以规范。这片水域被称为北冰洋中的“甜甜圈洞”，面积和德克萨斯州差不多大，北极点就在其中。这片水域周围是各国的专属经济区。

The part of the doughnut hole that is thawing most quickly, above Alaska and the Russian region of Chukotka, is well within the range of Asian industrial fishing fleets. Whatever their disagreements over Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the other shoreline states have a shared interest in protecting the high Arctic from unregulated fishing that could affect these countries’ coastal stocks, conservationists say.

“甜甜圈洞”中解冻最快的部分，位于阿拉斯加和俄罗斯楚科奇地区以北，在亚洲工业捕鱼船队的作业范围之内。无管制捕捞可能会影响俄罗斯、美国和其他几个北极沿岸国家的沿海鱼类。无论它们在乌克兰问题上有何分歧，在防止北极高纬度地区的无管制捕捞上，它们有着共同的利益，环保人士说。

“Some people call this Arctic exceptionalism,” Clive Tesar, the spokesman for the Arctic Program at the World Wildlife Fund, said in a telephone interview. “We can have our disagreements elsewhere, but in the Arctic, we have to cooperate.”

“有些人说这是‘北极例外主义’，”世界野生动物基金会(World Wildlife Fund)的北极计划发言人克莱夫·特萨(Clive Tesar)在电话采访中说。“我们可能在其他地方存在分歧，但在北极，我们必须开展合作。”

The agreement among the five countries is seen as a first step to a broader international accord to protect the open water until the fish stocks there, like Arctic cod, can be more fully studied. Fish may migrate into the ice-free area as the ocean warms, tempting fishing fleets to follow.

五国之间的这个协定，被视为通向更宽泛的国际协议的第一步，该协议将保护开阔水域，直到那里的鱼类资源得到更加充分的研究，比如北极鳕鱼。随着海水变暖，鱼类可能会迁徙到无冰区，捕捞船队可能会紧随其后。

The accord is unusual for protecting a huge area from human exploitation before people have had much chance to exploit it. Before the last decade, scientists estimate, the doughnut hole had been icebound for about 100,000 years.

该协定的不同寻常之处在于，它在人类尚未有多少机会开采一大块地方的资源之前，就阻止了人类对它的无序开采。据科学家估计，在上个十年之前，“甜甜圈洞”已经被冰封了约10万年。