The Pribilofs are a four-island archipelago marooned in the Bering Sea, 300 miles from Alaska's mainland and 200 miles north of Dutch Harbor. While little more than treeless, tundra-covered hills, the shoreline and cliffs of St. Paul and St. George Islands are teaming with wildlife, making these two islands an unlikely tourist attraction. Two small communities, one on each island – St. Paul, population 450, and St. George population 112 - are the world’s largest indigenous Aleut villages and provide services to the trickle of wildlife enthusiasts that make their way out to the middle of Bering Sea.
The Pribilof Islands host the largest gathering of marine mammals in the world. Meanwhile, the islands' dizzying ocean cliffs are home to extensive bird rookeries. More than 2.5 million seabirds, ranging from common murres and crested auklets to tufted puffins and cormorants, nest on the Pribilofs, particularly St. George, making this the largest seabird colony in the Northern Hemisphere. It's easy to reach the cliffs to photograph the birds; more than 230 species are sighted during the summer, while blinds have been erected on beaches to observe northern fur seals, Steller sea lions, walruses and sea otters.
Although the Aleuts traveled to the Pribilofs seasonally for hunting, the islands were uninhabited when Russian fur trader Gavrill Pribylov arrived at St. George Island in 1786. For two years the Russian American Company enslaved and relocated Aleuts from Siberia, Atka, and Unalaska to the Pribilofs to hunt fur seals; today’s island residents are descendants. Already severely over harvested, fur seal numbers crashed and the Aleut communities slid into poverty. Further hardships resulted during World War II, when the residents were moved to an abandoned cannery in Southeast Alaska as part of the emergency evacuation of Aleuts from the Bering Sea. Eventually residents returned to the Pribilofs, were compensated for the unjust treatment and in 1985 commercial seal harvesting ceased. Today, the only hunting allowed is for subsistence purposes. Seal numbers have since rebounded and the Pribilofs' charcoal-colored beaches host a mad scene each summer.