Thousands of islands.
Millions of birds.
Surrounded by oceans of life.
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
is an icon for wildness and conservation
within America's National Wildlife Refuge system.
Located on the northern arc of the volcanically active Ring
of Fire, the Wildlife Refuge is fueled
by the confluence of the cold North Pacific Ocean
and dramatic geologic processes.
This combination attracts an unimaginable congregation
of wildlife, from Northern fur seals,
which migrate from as far away as California,
to millions of seabirds that arrive here
from across the Pacific.
There are more seabirds that call Alaska Maritime National
Wildlife Refuge home than in all the rest of North America
combined.
The refuge protects over 4.9 million acres, 2.6 million
of which are designated wilderness.
And while the wildlife may know how to find their way here,
for the rest of us, it can be a difficult place to get to.
While much of the refuge has been protected by the US Fish
and Wildlife Service as a National Wildlife Refuge
for over a century, this is also the ancestral homeland
of Alaska Native people, who have been thriving here
for thousands of years.
So what we're going to do is we're
going to save some of the good blubber.
Refuge staff assist with youth culture camps,
like Camp Qungaayux on Unalaska, teaching marine science lessons
alongside Unangan elders who share cultural traditions
and skills with the next generation.
Most of these islands have no airports,
or docks for boats, making the 120 foot research vessel
Tiglax a critical connection point for people
working on remote islands.
Like the biologists who study seabird
colonies, a project that has continued
for more than three decades.
Seabirds make their living in the ocean,
but they must come to land to lay their eggs
and raise their young.
They find safe harbor on these protected islands
and the nutrient-rich surrounding waters
feed their growing chicks.
Whales, seals, and other marine mammals
are also drawn to this marine soup.
In the short summer nesting season
that the seabirds come to land, refuge biologists
are deployed to study them.
The Tiglax is custom designed to allow
us to get near these many, many islands
and yet get people and supplies ashore.
Deploy the skiff.
We'll put some people in here and get to that island.
We have established a handful of sites
that we go to each and every year.
And we carefully monitor seabirds
that breed on these eight sites, year, after year, after year.
Biologists who spend time at the remote refuge field camps
will be a long way away from civilization.
For up to six months at a time, there
will be as few as just two people on a single island.
So today, I'm doing some cliff observations.
I'm looking at birds on those nests
and what species they are.
The chick can still breathe, even
though I'm closing it's bill.
It's one of the reasons that looking at long-term data sets
is really important.
79.5.
You didn't grow much in the last week, but his wing got longer.
This bird has another month or so in its burrow before it
fledges.
Got crazy.
Alaska Maritime Refuge provides important habitat
for a group of seabirds called auklets.
They uniquely benefit from the refuge being
in a volcanically active zone, where eruptions and earthquakes
are the routine.
A volcanic eruption is a disruptive force.
But it is also regenerative.
Here at Sirius Point is the location of a recent lava flow.
Recent meeting in the 1960s.
From the volcano here in Kiska.
This is the site of an amazingly large least and crested auklet
colony.
They need, basically, fresh lava to keep their colony going.
Auklets use lava habitat to nest.
But as birds started socializing on the tops of the rocks
and basically pooping on top of them,
it created a lot of nutrients to allow vegetation to grow.
You get to a point where you actually have overgrowth,
and it can actually limit the nesting anymore.
Because it covers up all their access
to getting down into the crevices in the boulders.
The Aleutian chain, it's the Ring of Fire,
and it's built on volcanoes.
And there are a lot of active volcanoes, still.
And those eruptive events create new habitat for the auklets.
Volcanoes are what created many of these islands.
And without the islands, there would be no seabirds nesting here.
While seabirds are a major resource of Alaska Maritime
National Wildlife Refuge, there are many other species here, too.
Marine mammals, such as northern fur seals and sea lions,
also rely on these nutrient rich waters and safe beaches
to congregate and breed.
There is, perhaps, no greater place
to see the primordial story of life play
out than on Bogoslof Island, where
as many as 140,000 northern fur seals congregate
during their breeding season.
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
is an essential link to our planet's wildlife legacy.
And in conserving these coastal lands,
America has ensured a home for seabirds and marine mammals
for generations to come.