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54°42′23.52″N167°43′2.23″E / 54.7065333°N 167.7172861°E /54.7065333; 167.7172861
Medny Island (Russian:о́стров Ме́дный), also spelledMednyy orMednyi, sometimes calledCopper Island in English (literally translated from Russian), is the smaller (afterBering Island) of the two mainislands in theCommander Islands in the NorthPacific Ocean, east ofKamchatka,Russia. (The other fifteen are better described asislets and rocks.) These islands belong to theKamchatka Krai of the Russian Federation.
The island was uninhabited until the late 19th century, whenAleuts came fromAttu Island in theAleutian Islands to Medny Island.
The island is 56 km (35 mi) long and between 5 and 7 km (3.1 and 4.3 mi) wide and its area is 186 km2 (72 sq mi). Its maximum elevation is 640 m (2,100 ft) and the average annual temperature is +2.8 °C (37.0 °F). About 100 metres (330 ft) off the northwestern end of the islands are theBeaver Stones (Бобровые камни inRussian), two islets connected by anisthmus, with a combined length of 1 km (0.62 mi).
The island was sighted on 5 November 1741 byBering and his crew while returning from the expedition during which he found America from the west, but he did not land on this island.[1]
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.[2]
Towards the end of the 19th century, the settlement ofPreobrazhenskoye was established by Aleuts who moved there fromAttu Island.
According to linguists, the island's residents spoke a creole language, known as theMednyj Aleut language, which combined Russian and Aleut vocabulary and grammar.
In 1970, all citizens of the island were moved to neighboringBering Island. 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.
Medny Island is home to manySteller sea lions. 340 pups were born on the island in 1999, and 153 in 2016.[3]
On Medny Island, for example, only 153 pups were born in 2016, down from 340 births in 1999.
