Chukchi Shelf

The Chukchi Corridor is a 50-mile wide strip of ocean offshore of Northwest Alaska that acts as a passageway for one of the largest marine mammal migrations in the world.

This region includes biologically important gray whale feeding and reproduction habitats[6] Many bird species navigate the Chukchi Corridor to migrate to the North Slope for summer breeding[7] As a region with substantial seafloor productivity, the Chukchi Corridor is an important nursery habitat for forage fish species, Arctic cod, and Saffron cod.

[11] The National Marine Fisheries Service designated areas along the entire Chukchi coast out to 15–30 miles offshore as Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) for saffron cod.

On January 27, 2015, President Obama, using his authorities under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, permanently withdrew the waters 3 to 25 miles offshore from future oil and gas leasing activities.

[14] The stratigraphy and structural geology of the Chukchi Shelf have been studied due to it being a potential source area of sediment that filled the North Slope basin.

These examples in the Chukchi Shelf show that structural inheritance can survive multiple deformational events through hundreds of millions of years.