Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk

The Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk exhibit introduces visitors to highly productive seas providing the bulk of the fish and seafood caught in the Russian Federation.

The deepest and biggest in Russia, the Bering Sea is a home for 400 fish species. Narwhals, finbacks, humpback and sei whales along with blue, bowhead, and gray whales forage in its vast expanses. Rookeries of walruses, sea lions, and fur seals spread along the seashore. Coastal algal beds host the sea otter, a marine mammal that, not long ago, narrowly escaped extinction caused by overhunting for its fur.

The Sea of Okhotsk is the most biologically productive marine ecosystem in Russia. It supports a diverse array of animal life, including some 300 species of fishes, the most numerous populations of the red and blue king crab, as well as of bivalves and gastropods and huge resources of valuable sea grasses and seaweeds. At the same time, large scale production of oil and gas currently takes place on the Sea of Okhotsk shelf. That is why maintaining a reasonable balance to protect the ocean life is one of the high-priority tasks of sustainable resource management.

This exhibit is home to northern fur seals, and visitors can watch them gracefully moving and joyfully playing in their pool.

The core of the exhibit is a giant Kelp Forest tank housing various species not only of seawee.