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Arctic community leaders, fishing industry representatives and conservation groups are praising the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's proposal to close the Arctic to commercial fishing for now. They're hoping other Arctic nations will be inspired to do the same.

Why the closure is necessary: "We know almost nothing about Arctic fishes, when you get right down to it," said council staffer Bill Wilson, who wrote the draft fisheries management plan that's now out for public comment.

The North Pacific council is one of eight regional councils overseeing the nation's fisheries management. It manages the groundfish of the 900,000 square miles of federal waters off Alaska.

Wilson guessed at least 10 to 20 years would pass before any fishery opened.

"This is a complete change from the way fisheries management has taken place," said Chris Krenz, Arctic project manager for the environmental watchdog Oceana. "This is proactive."

Arctic communities support the closure.

"Our residents have a historical and cultural dependence on marine resources," said Tom Okleasik, Northwest Arctic Borough planning director. "We feel that a full understanding of the Arctic needs to be first."

One might expect an outcry from the fishing industry - but not so.

Wilson said that's partly because nobody fishes up there yet, and partly because the plan includes a process for opening up the Arctic.

"The door isn't just 100 percent bolted and locked" to fishing, he said. "It's just closed, and can be opened."

The Marine Conservation Alliance says the closure is the only responsible act. It’s a nonprofit that represents the trawlers, cod long-liners, crab boats and processors that produce 70 percent of Alaska’s seafood.

One reason, said MCA executive director David Benton, is that the U.S. needs to set a good example if it wants other nations - already champing at the bit to fish in and ship through the fast-melting Arctic - to join in conservation efforts rather than undermine them.

"There needs to be some order brought to the Arctic," he said. "We're interested in not repeating the mistake of the Bering Sea."

The Bering Sea Donut Hole is a pocket of ocean surrounded by but not claimed in Russian and U.S. 200-mile exclusive economic zones. Uncontrolled fishing crashed the pollock populations there in the late 1980s. Fourteen years after several nations agreed to halt fishing, the fish haven't recovered.

Like those of the Donut Hole, Arctic fish resources are likely to cross international boundaries, experts say.

"There is a lot of international interest in what the council is doing," Wilson said.

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution this summer asking the State Department to encourage other Arctic nations to close northern fisheries as well. Last month, the council staff's executive director joined State Department officials in Kaliningrad, Russia, to brief Russian officials on the fishery management plan, Wilson said.

"It's not going to be something that takes place immediately and overnight," Benton said. "But the Russians are interested in talking about how we would work together."

Research is picking up, for example, with recent funding from the federal Minerals Management Service, which is examining potential oil and gas development in the region.

But much of the existing data is qualitative and nearly two decades old, while things are changing fast. The polar ice cap shrunk more than ever in the last two summers.

Scientists know a bit about the nearshore ecosystems, which are driven by plankton blooms and spring ice melt. They don't know how a faster melt will affect fish, seals, polar bears, birds and other creatures up the food chain.

Meanwhile, crab, cod, pollock and salmon may be migrating north.

"This is all happening at a very rapid pace," Benton said. "That's why a prohibition on fishing up there is a wise idea until we start to get that information."

The North Pacific council included Arctic surveys in its research priorities. But Arctic research is expensive; the nearest gas station is in Dutch Harbor. How well it is funded is "a matter of public policy and public priorities," Wilson said. And right now, no one is salivating over potential commercial fisheries there.

"We're not talking about a whole lot of biomass up there that might be considered economically attractive," Wilson said. "There's a lot of small, strange critters."

• Contact reporter Kate Golden at 523-2276 or e-mail kate.golden@juneauempire.com.