31 May 2014

Sea Cow Skeleton

We spent the day at sea yesterday birding and watching passing whales as we headed towards the Commander Islands. This morning we landed at the only village on Bering Island to complete border formalities and visit the local museum. This museum in the village of Nikolskoye is one of the only places in the world to exhibit a complete skeleton of an extinct Steller’s Sea Cow. Birding is very good at this time of year as the migratory species have arrived and many are starting to breed. The weather deteriorated in the afternoon preventing a landing at a Northern Fur Seal rookery, so instead we went in search of whales. We cruised along the deep underwater trench that runs along the eastern coast of Bering Island and spotted a number of Humpbacks and Orca.