Medny Island (russian: о́стров Ме́дный), also spelled ''Mednyy'' or ''Mednyi'', sometimes called Copper Island in English (literally translated from Russian), is the smaller (after

Bering Island Bering Island (russian: о́стров Бе́ринга, ''ostrov Beringa'') is located off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Bering Sea. Description At long by wide, it is the largest and westernmost of the Commander Islands, with an area of . ...

) of the two main

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

s in the

Commander Islands The Commander Islands, Komandorski Islands, or Komandorskie Islands (russian: Командо́рские острова́, ''Komandorskiye ostrova'') are a series of treeless, sparsely populated Russian islands in the Bering Sea located about ea ...

in the North

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

, east of

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and west ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. (The other fifteen are better described as

islets An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanent ...

and rocks.) These islands belong to the Kamchatka Krai of the Russian Federation. The island was uninhabited until the late 19th century, when

Aleuts The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...

came from Attu Island in the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a chain of 14 large v ...

to Medny Island. The island is long and between wide and its area is . Its maximum elevation is and the average annual temperature is . About off the northwestern end of the islands are the ''Beaver Stones'' (Бобровые камни in

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

), two islets connected by an

isthmus An isthmus (; ; ) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus ...

, with a combined length of . 1966 CPA 3447

History

The island was sighted by on 5 November 1741 by Bering and his crew while returning from the expedition during which he found America from the west, but he did not land on this island. The Russian naval officer and historian Vasily Berch believed that Yemelyan Basov reached this island in 1745, during his second of four expeditions to the Commander Islands between 1743 and 1749, and that most of the furs he brought back to Kamchatka in 1745 were hunted on this island. Towards the end of the 19th century, the settlement of Preobrazhenskoye was established by Aleuts who moved there from Attu Island. According to linguists, the island's residents spoke a creole language, known as the

Mednyj Aleut language Mednyj Aleut (also called Copper Island Creole or Copper Island Aleut) is an extinct mixed language spoken on Bering Island. Mednyj Aleut is characterized by a blending of Russian and Aleut (primarily Attu) elements in most components of the ...

, which combined Russian and Aleut vocabulary and grammar. In 1970, all citizens of the island were moved to neighboring

. Until 2001, the island was occupied as a frontier post. Since then, the island has been completely uninhabited. Scientific studies of the fauna and flora are conducted annually.

Ecology

Medny Island is home to many

Steller sea lions The Steller sea lion (''Eumetopias jubatus''), also known as the Steller's sea lion and northern sea lion, is a near-threatened species of sea lion in the northern Pacific. It is the Monotypic taxon, sole member of the genus ''Eumetopias'' and ...

. 340 pups were born on the island in 1999, and 153 in 2016.

References

External links

Medny Island at Northern Pacific Fund
{{Islands in the Bering Sea Islands of the Commander Islands Islands of the Bering Sea Islands of the Russian Far East Islands of Kamchatka Krai