Coast Guard watched Russian navy ships map the seafloor in U.S. waters off Alaska

The Coast Guard's Arctic District monitored three Russian navy survey ships mapping the seafloor inside U.S. waters off Alaska, the first time it had done so, Lt. Cmdr. Jedediah Raskie told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Oct. 8.

The ships were navy support vessels, not combat ships, and their mapping is permitted under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Raskie said. The Coast Guard made sure they did no marine scientific research, which needs approval, and called all interactions safe and professional.

Ships from adversarial nations have increased since about 2020, raising the potential for interactions with the fishing fleet, Raskie said. That year, Russian warships forced U.S. fishing boats off their grounds inside the U.S. exclusive economic zone for a weapons exercise.

Four Chinese research ships, one fewer than last year, worked the Bering Sea and Arctic from July through October, their tracks clustered over the U.S. extended continental shelf claim north of the Chukchi Sea. "It's apparent that the U.S. extended continental shelf claim is a primary area where they operate," Raskie said. The icebreaker Storis kept watch and gave the ships State Department language barring research without prior approval. The Coast Guard did not say any violation occurred.

Closer to the fishing grounds, 13 Russian fishing vessels made 88 potential crossings of the U.S.-Russia boundary line in June, all detected by vessel tracking signals, according to the district's enforcement report. No aircraft or cutter saw a Russian boat fishing over the line, and the detections stopped once the cutter Alex Haley arrived.

Russia said it penalized two vessels and that the rest were too brief or shallow to confirm. "We obviously disagree with that, but that's the Russian Border Guard's response," Raskie said.

Three federal funding lapses since October 2025 affected the district's numbers, the report says. Patrol planes logged 200 law enforcement hours through September, compared with 336 in all of 2025.

Six people died in 41 search and rescue cases involving fishing vessels from June to September. The seven deaths so far this year are the most in the six years the report charts.