The name of the strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska, is the:

Correct — B. The Bering Strait separates the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska, exactly as the stem describes.

It joins the Bering Sea, part of the Pacific, to the Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, and is about 82 km wide at its narrowest.

It is named after Vitus Bering, the Danish navigator sailing for Russia. The Diomede Islands lie inside it, with the International Date Line running between Russian Big Diomede and American Little Diomede. The strait is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Davis Strait — The Davis Strait lies between Greenland and Baffin Island in Canada, linking Baffin Bay to the Labrador Sea. It is an Atlantic approach to the Arctic, so it touches no Pacific water.
• (c)
  Messina Strait — The Strait of Messina separates Sicily from mainland Italy inside the Mediterranean, far from either of the oceans named in the question.
• (d)
  Florida Strait — The Florida Strait runs between Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic. It is tropical, and both its shores are in the Americas.

A strait is a narrow channel joining two larger water bodies and usually separating two landmasses, so the reliable way to hold one is as a pair of pairs: which two waters it joins, and which two lands it divides.

The Bering Strait is unusual in doing heavy work on both counts. It is the Pacific-Arctic connection, and it carries the maritime boundary between Russia and the United States.

During the Pleistocene, when sea levels were lower, the same seabed was dry land — Beringia, the route by which people are thought to have first reached the Americas.

Key facts

• The Bering Strait connects the Bering Sea of the Pacific with the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean.
• It separates the Chukchi Peninsula of Russia from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska and is about 82 km wide at its narrowest.
• It is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish navigator in Russian service.
• The International Date Line passes between Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States, inside the strait.

Common traps

• Davis Strait is the usual wrong pick because it is also a cold-water Arctic passage, but it opens to the Atlantic and not to the Pacific.
• The strait is named for an explorer, which tempts students to file it with Atlantic exploration routes.
• Chukchi names both a peninsula in Russia and a sea in the Arctic, so seeing the word twice in one question is not a contradiction.

No directly related past PYQ was found.