Thursday, a federal advisory board voted to ban commercial fishing north of the Bering Strait off Alaska's coast, a decision aimed at limiting the damage to Arctic waters that have been opened by virtue of global warming.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which assembled in Seattle, voted unanimously to forbid commercial fishing in approximately 200,000 square miles of U.S. waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

For the time being, the United States Commerce Department’s approval of the measure is expected.

Dave Benton, director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, which is a trade group that represents the fishing interests of rural Alaska village associations, hailed the council’s decision because, as he stated, the rate of change in the Arctic was on the rise, while the thawing of sea ice outpaced the experts’ ability to determine whether a sustainable fishery in the Arctic was possible.

Moreover, Janis Searles Jones, vice president of Ocean Conservancy, also praised the measure, saying it removed an additional source of stress and gave the Arctic’s peoples and animals a chance to adapt to the ongoing changes.

Jay Ginter of the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service said that the agency might take a at least six months in order to review the federal advisory’s recommendation.

If the measure gets approved, it would come to protect 196,000 square miles of U.S waters, along with the polar bears, whales and walruses that inhabit them.

In 2007, Arctic Ocean summer sea ice melted to 1.65 million square miles, which translates as 40% less than the average figures registered between 1979 and 2000.