Day 5 — June 29
Severo Zapadnyy and Nikolskoye Village, Bering Island / Ariy Kamen Islands, Commander Islands Group  Islands have always fascinated the human mind. Perhaps it is the instinctive response of man, the land animal, welcoming a brief intrusion of earth in the vast, overwhelming expanse of sea
—Rachel Carson
No visit to this part of the Russian Far East would be complete without voyaging to the remote Commander Islands, the westernmost outliers of the volcanic arc that stretches from Kamchatka to Alaska and most of which we know of as the Aleutian Islands. This cluster of islands approximately 250 kilometers east of the Kamchatka Peninsula is an outlying military listening station on the edge of the enormous Russian realm. Arriving first at the northwestern tip of Bering Island, our morning excursion provided us with a unique opportunity to observe three species of pinnipeds together. The main beach at Severo Zapadnyy was covered with northern fur seals gathering to breed. Here, the pregnant females were coming ashore to pup, and we were treated to views of tiny pups, some of whom were just hours or, at most, a couple of days old. Here and there were clusters of females, grouped within loose harems over which dominant males held court. Within days of pupping, the females will have mated again and begun another period of pregnancy. Delayed implantation of the fertilized egg enables the female to time her birthing to the brief period of early summer, the only time of year when she comes to shore.
At the back and sides of the beach were the hopeful, frustrated SAMs, the sub-adult male fur seals, awaiting their chance of mating with a stray female. Here and there amongst the fur seals were larger tawny creatures—Steller’s sea lions. Along with the magnificent eagle, this creature is also eponymously named after Georg Wilhelm Steller, naturalist aboard Vitus Bering’s ill-fated second expedition. Both fur seals and sea lions are eared seals, with visible, external pinnae. They are also distinguished by their flexible hip joints that allow them to rotate their hind limbs forward and under the body—sounds technical, but the essential upshot is that these beasts can run, and faster than we can. Not surprisingly therefore, for our safety and for their peace, we kept well away, watching and photographing from two viewpoints up on the sand dunes. Farther along the coast and out on rock flats exposed by the tide was our third species of pinniped, this time a “true” seal, the spotted, or largha, seal. Unlike the eared seals, these lack external ears, and they have inflexible hip joints that are greatly reduced and very far back on the body; the upshot of this is that they move just as we would were we encased in a thick blubber layer and zipped tight into a sleeping bag—like giant maggots or blubber slugs.
Our fourth mammal of the morning was the cheeky Arctic fox. One had been seen near our landing site, trotting across a snowbank, but of more interest was the individual sneaking about the fur seal rookery, no doubt taking advantage of the colony’s waste, in particular the afterbirths of the seals. One clearly had its eye on an isolated black-coated pup merely a few days old, and after being repulsed from the pup several times by a nearby SAM, the fox adopted the strategy of curling up on the beach as if to sleep, but clearly keeping an open eye on the nearby male seal and the pup; we were unable to await the outcome, but it was so strange for such a young pup to be alone that it was more than likely that the foxes did well that night.
There were other distractions of course, in the shape of highly photogenic carpets of flowers: geraniums, globeflowers, spotted orchids, and many others, and on the low cliffs near the fur seal colony marvelous red-faced cormorants posed perfectly for our cameras.
This was the kind of day we associate with a Mike Messick-led expedition. It was packed with action and excitement, with three excursions on offer: morning, afternoon, and evening. Some of us may have been tired, but how many of us were able to resist participating in them all? After all you can take a holiday once you get back! Lunch on board provided us with a breather, and time to gather our energies for the next visit ashore, this time of a very different nature.
Next up was the remote settlement of Nikolskoye (pronounced Ni-KOL’-skoye’), the only Aleut village in Russia. Once this was the first line of defense and intelligence on the border between two great but mutually suspicious superpowers; now it is almost the farthest point one can imagine from the center of Russian administration in Moscow. Today’s fascinating introduction to the local Aleut culture, through an enlivening and energetic song-and-dance performance, was somewhat unusual in the sense that the big surprise was for the dancers and their community’s school. It is a Zegrahm Expeditions tradition to deliver a box of school supplies to each remote community that we visit, and we did so here, but in this instance, thanks to a past Zegrahm traveler’s very generous donation for the community, we were also able to deliver an array of sports equipment for the school gym and a library of educational DVDs and videos, and more importantly, all the necessary equipment to view them on, including an enormous wide-screen TV, DVD, and video player. The school’s principal was clearly moved by the generosity, and accepted them on behalf of the community for the education of her charges.
Among the troupe of performers, the four older ladies and the older man who played the accordion were the only fluent speakers of Aleut. They have visited the United States, the Aleutian Islands, and have met and now have regular exchanges with American Aleuts. Most of the 300 families who live here are of mixed Aleut and Russian extraction. Until a few years ago this was a closed ‘city,’ and even Russians could not visit Nikolskoye, as Bering Island had become a largely military post. It was Russia’s easternmost listening station—dedicated to listening in on the U.S. military.
Some took time to explore this small town’s excellent little museum, which displays among many other items, a complete skeleton of the extinct Steller’s sea cow, a manatee-like creature, and some major artifacts from the ill-fated Bering expedition. Others ventured out of town in search of birds and encountered flocks of summer-plumaged dunlin refueling on the mudflats on their way north to their high Arctic breeding grounds.
Our final excursion of the day, which lasted until almost 2200, was a magical after-dinner Zodiac cruise around the Ariy Kamen Islands. This group of rocky outcroppings, composed of columnar basalt that was probably the core of an ancient volcano, is the chosen home of thousands of seabirds: murres, cormorants, puffins, and most notable of all, a Beringian endemic—the red-legged kittiwake—a local and far rarer species than its widespread cousin, the black-legged kittiwake.
<< Previous | Next >> |
Reports
Day by Day Report