VI.

Resources

Fish, in commercially exploitable quantities, are found only in the warmer marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, notably in the Barents Sea (primarily cod). Sea mammals, including various species of seal and whale, were hunted to near extinction before being protected by quotas set during the 1900s. Tin is actively mined off the coast of eastern Siberia. Petroleum and natural gas are extracted north of Alaska and Canada. In 2007 the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that the ocean basin off eastern Greenland may hold as much as 31.4 billion barrels of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in an area of 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq mi). The USGS study of eastern Greenland is part of an effort to survey the entire Arctic for oil and natural gas deposits known as the Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal.