Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

Aleutes catching Halibut, Akootan Pass, Bering Sea.

The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about the waters during five or six months of every year renders all fishing abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at least from the land, unless you desire to catch large halibut, it is a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwale of the boat. The natives capture “poltoos” or halibut, Hippoglossus vulgaris, within two or three miles of the reef-point on St. Paul and the south shore during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so stormy and cold that fishermen venture no more until the ensuing summer.[95]

With regard to the Mollusca of the Pribylov waters, the characteristic forms of Toxoglossata and Rhachiglossata peculiar to this north latitude are most abundant; of the Cephalopoda I have seen only a species of squid, sepia, or loligo. The clustering whelks (Buccinum) literally conceal large areas of the boulders on the beaches here and there. They are in immense numbers, and are crushed under your foot at almost every step when you pass over long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the Neptunea are found, and the live and dead shells of Limacina are in great abundance wherever the floating kelp-beds afford them shelter.

On land a very large number of shells of the genera Succinea and Pupa abound all over the islands. On the bluffs of St. George, just over Garden Cove, I gathered a beautiful Helix.

The little fresh-water lakes and ponds contain a great quantity of representatives of the characteristic genera Planorbis, Melania, Limnea, and that pretty little bivalve, the Cyclas.

Of the Crustacea, the Annelidæ, and Echinodermata, there is abundant representation here. The sea-urchins, “repkie” of the natives, are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them. The arctic sea-clam, Mya truncata, is once in a long time found here (it is the chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and the species of Mytilus, the mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago, are almost absent here at St. Paul and only sparingly found at St. George. Frequently the natives have brought a dish of sea-urchins’ viscera for our table, offering it as a great delicacy. I do not think any of us did more than to taste it. The native women are the chief hunters for echinoidæ, and during the whole spring and summer seasons they will be seen at both islands, wading in the pools at low water, with their scanty skirts high up, eagerly laying possessive hands upon every “bristling egg” that shows itself. They vary this search by poking, with a short-handled hook, into holes and rocky crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here at low water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I brought down declared themselves as representatives of a new departure from all other recognized forms in which the sculpin is known to sport; hence the name, generic and specific. The “sandcake,” echinarachinus, is also very common here.

By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, and sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the best-flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken nowhere else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one. I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz.: May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books on which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the present writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only economic shell-fish which the islands afford is embodied in this Chionoecetes opilio (?). The natives affirm an existence of mussels here in abundance when the Pribylov group was first discovered; but now only a small supply of inferior size and quality is to be found.

With reference to the jelly-fishes, Medusæ, which are so abundant in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number and variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous aggregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and translucent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the spring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, to decay on the sandy flats of this estuary.