St. Paul Island

Dave Gibson

01/25/2007 - One thousand miles west of Anchorage, Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Sea, lie the isolated Pribilof Islands. At times foggy and at others windswept, they are comprised of St. Paul Island (pop.760), St. George Island (pop.150), and two uninhabited minor islands. They are characterized by treeless, rolling tundra and sheer rock cliffs that support a myriad of birds and sea mammals.

  The islands were discovered in June of 1786 by Russian navigator Gerasin Pribilof. In the name of the lucrative fur trade, his company brought Aleut slaves here to harvest Northern fur seal pelts, greatly reducing their estimated pre-exploitation populations of two million seals. In 1867, financially strapped and fearing losing the territory without compensation to the English, Czar Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States for the then-princely sum of 7.2 million dollars (1.67 billion of today’s dollars). The citizenry of the U.S. and newspaper writers widely derided the “worthless purchase” in what became known as “Seward’s folly.” By 1911 fur seal numbers had been decimated to a mere 150 thousand individuals. In that year, Russia, England, the United States, and Japan signed a treaty banning ocean hunting of the seals and limiting land harvests. In 1985 commercial seal harvesting was completely eliminated except for native peoples’ subsistence hunts, which continue today.

  Lodging on St. Paul Island can be found at the comfortable and rustically worn King Eider Hotel. I am warned not to leave my room’s window ajar to discourage opportunistic Arctic foxes who have been known to enter and pilfer anything of nutritional value. The foxes are a rich mocha brown and patrol the streets of the town and surrounding lupine blanketed hills. There is a bar next door that on some nights emanates the curious sounds of Aleut Eskimos joyously performing karaoke. One block away, meals are taken at the seafood processing plant. If you’ve ever seen Discovery Channel’s “Most Dangerous Jobs”, this is where the fishermen bring their catch of Alaskan king crab. Crab cages are stacked everywhere around the factory. I can’t help but think of the hundreds of sojourning young men who come to Alaska each year in search of adventure on the high seas, in the form of fishing jobs, only to end up working on the “slime line.”

  Leaving the hotel, our guide transports us a short distance to a trail that leads to the top of the precipitous lichen-covered cliffs that teem with seabirds. Tufted puffins shuttle back and forth from their craggy roosts to the ocean, returning with small fish sandwiched in their bright orange-and-yellow beaks. Parakeet, Least, and Crested auklets, along with other alcids, line the guano-splattered rock walls. A Red-faced cormorant sits on her nest, ever vigilant, in hopes of adding to the avian conglomeration. Survival of the young is by no means guaranteed as the scattered bleached bones on the ground attest. I parallel the shoreline and notice something small and furry peering out from behind the tall, thick grass. An Arctic fox kit, barely a month old, is cautiously engaged in his first explorations of a strange but inviting new world. With its mother and siblings nowhere in sight, he doesn’t venture far and soon returns to the security of his cozy den. A Rosy finch carrying nesting material flutters by. I peek over the edge of the cliff to espy six Thick-billed murres dressed in their finest tuxedos.

  Behind me, only a couple of hundred yards away on the opposite side of the peninsula, are animals of a different kind. Out of sight, but not smell, their booming guttural calls rudely announce their presence. Northern fur seals, whose numbers have rebounded to 1.5 million, have taken up residence on the beach. The “beachmasters”, who can weigh 600 pounds, are first to arrive in late May, at the haul-out sites and rookeries, to stake out their territories. They are followed by the much smaller females in June who, within 48 hours of landing, give birth to their pups. Every patch of land is occupied and the real estate is hotly disputed. From one of the two seal blinds on the island, I see the omnipresent foxes weaving between the blubbery masses in search of afterbirth. One seal gets too close to another’s claimed area and the offender is promptly chased away by the teeth-displaying rightful owner. Aleut schoolchildren, on a field trip, watch from behind the wooden slats and delight in the seals' antics more than those of us who traveled thousands of miles to witness them. A large bull fur seal poses confidently, sunning himself on a comfortable rock in the kelp beds. A juvenile seal swims too close and is grabbed by the scruff of the neck and tossed into the air like a rag doll! Many of the fur seals bear horrendous-looking wounds deep into their flesh and although ghastly in appearance are, to the seal, mostly superficial and heal quickly.

  Birders make up the majority of the three thousand tourists that visit the Pribilof Islands each year. Two hundred species of birds can be seen here and the possibility of spotting a casual or accidental stray from Siberia is an irresistible draw. I see Black-legged and Red-legged kittiwakes, Northern fulmars, Horned puffins, Lapland longspurs, Common pochards, and murrelets. Birders and wildlife photographers have a lot in common. They will both go to great lengths to find their quarry. We photographers may wait for hours at one location and return repeatedly to attain the perfect shot. They, on the other hand, might only spend a matter of minutes observing a particular bird, check it off a list and move on. Each approach, it seems to me, has its own sensibilities and absurdities.

  Standing around the half-disintegrated pilings of an old loading dock, a group of birders have their scopes and binoculars meticulously trained upon a frenzied, dive-bombing flock of seagulls. One quarter-mile offshore, they are feeding on discarded fish parts that have been flushed out to sea from the processing plant. Being a beginning birder, I have trouble distinguishing one seagull from another, but apparently a major sighting has occurred. The Slaty-backed gull is a rare visitor to Alaska and is causing quite a stir. I look through one of the spotting scopes at the tumultuous cloud of zigzagging seagulls. With words of encouragement and direction, I think that I see the bird in question. Even after consulting my field guide later that evening, I still don’t see much difference between the Western and Slaty-backed gull.

  Seventy-two hours of almost endless Alaskan daylight have passed since my arrival. Of all the new animals that I’ve seen and captured on film, I think that the Arctic fox has been my favorite. As we head towards the airfield, among the heavy clumps of grass, one lets out a few shrill yaps to bid me adieu.