A survey suggests that most Canadians back a ban on commercial fishing in the Arctic where experts warn melting sea ice and warming water could draw fishing fleets to the North within the next few years.
"There will, in the not too distant future, be the opportunity for someone in a fishing boat to go in there," said Trevor Taylor of the environmental group Oceans North.
Some 54 per cent of those asked said the government should work to prevent all countries from fishing in international Arctic waters until research has determined the extent of stocks and regulations are in place to control how they're exploited. That's more than twice as many as the 23 per cent who believed Canadian fishers should be encouraged to head into the Arctic if other countries go there first.
The telephone survey of 1,205 Canadians was taken in late May by Nanos Research. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Taylor said his group commissioned the poll to highlight the need to protect Arctic fish before they start being commercially harvested.
"Somebody's got to get the discussion going," he said.
Northern fisheries are covered by international agreements in waters within the 200-mile limits of coastal nations. But High Arctic waters beyond those limits -- such as those of the Canada Basin west of the Arctic islands -- remain unregulated. No commercial fisheries now exist there.
The United States has ruled that no fishing will be allowed in its portion of the Beaufort Sea. The European Union, home to one of the world's biggest fishing fleets, has discussed a similar position.
But as stocks decline elsewhere in the oceans and climate change opens the Arctic, pressure will inevitably build.
"(Fishers) will go North as they exhaust fisheries resources elsewhere," said Michael Byers, an international law professor at the University of British Columbia.
"We don't know of any ships that are going into those waters, but one can certainly argue that there is time pressure if you want to get ahead of the problem. When you're talking about the opening up of any new region, there's a distinct advantage in having law arrive before the private actors do."
Some research suggests a High Arctic fishery is at least possible as species such as cod, crab and pollock migrate North as sea ice melts and water warms.
"Commercial fishing the Arctic may become economically viable," concludes a report on which the U.S. government based its Beaufort decision.
A report for the European Commission came to similar conclusions, while adding that changes will be difficult to predict.
"Arctic fisheries could lead to over-exploitation of target species," it said. "Such undesirable effects are without doubt already occurring."
A recent University of British Columbia study suggested that even fisheries in regulated Arctic waters have already caught 75 times more fish than have been reported to monitoring agencies.
Byers said regulating a northern fishery could be a job for the Arctic Council, the group of seven nations that ring the North Pole.
"If the Arctic Ocean coastal states were to get moving on this, and develop reasonable rules concerning fisheries management for the entire Arctic Ocean, there's a decent chance that these distant fishing countries like South Korea and Japan would acquiesce," he said.
"But if those countries start fishing in that area before the coastal states adopt a system, it would be very difficult to get them to pull back."
Taylor said it's a mistake to consider offshore drilling and other energy developments as the only environmental threat in the Arctic Ocean.
"While everyone is talking about oil and gas development and undersea mining and such, you can mark it down that the first boats in (the High Arctic) will be commercial fishermen."
