 It's incredible in scope, you're going from one end of the Aleutian chain to the other and from one end of Alaska to another. The immense numbers of wild I found throughout the Aleutians are often found nowhere else in the world. It's wild, the weather is rough, it can be stunningly beautiful and it can be very harsh and unforgiving. I really don't know any other place like it. There are a few places in the United States that are as untouched as the Aleutian Islands. There are places where humans truly are a visitor. Dap room throughout the United States are wondrous places, protected so that wildlife comes first. Are national wildlife refuges? None is so vast or so remote as the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, 2,500 islands, sea stacks and headlands. Spanning almost 5,000 miles of Alaska coast, nearly to Siberia, the refuge islands are strikingly diverse. From ice-encrusted isles of the far north to lush temperate rainforests of southeast Alaska, rugged rock spires, high bluffs and smoking volcanoes, volcanoes and earthquakes have shaped the Aleutians into a surreal landscape where places still steam and vent sulfurous plumes. The peaks, craters, cliffs and domes seen now are but the tips of undersea mountains. These peaks rose from the sea as heavy ocean crust, pushed down beneath the lighter continental shelf and forced upward its arc of volcanoes, now a scattering of distant, lonely islands. Ideal harbor for abundant wildlife. An extraordinary way to explore the refuge is to follow a season's journey of the tecla. Research vessel for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and see the refuge through the experience of the scientists who work there. The tecla is a unique vessel that was designed for the refuge and built for the refuge and the refuge emission. We're 120 feet long, but we've got a lot of ship packed into the 120 feet. Because of the uniqueness of the Alaska Maritime Refuge, some of the islands are not very well charted, so we have to improvise and we actually make our own charts as we go. We will travel approximately 20,000 nautical miles and be gone for approximately seven months this year. Tecla means eagle and the native Aleut language. The tecla is a floating laboratory, a home away from home and lifeline to the refuge field camps for scientists from around the world. Leaving the security of the ship, biologists disembark to isolated wild islands. Their mission, to study and restore wildlife, to monitor population cycles in species and be watchful of those at risk. To learn more about the habitats that support wildlife and to ensure that the biological diversity and abundance of the refuge endure. We get to see aboard the ship some of the harshest ocean conditions of any oceans in the world where the Pacific meets the Bering Sea along the Aleutian chain and creates some of the most violent waters in the world. We see winds gusting to 100 plus knots. We see sea and sea state conditions reaching 35 foot and on 120 foot vessel they're ominous. Weather reports which can change from hour to hour might call for gale force winds, swirling fog, blizzards and cyclonic storms. We're the only vessel for many many miles so you have to be very careful and safety is the utmost concern when you're transiting these dangerous waters and these remote waters. Wildlife adapts to the weather and so do the scientists. Since the maritime refuge contains areas that are very isolated and many of the areas are in this zone where the weather is strange. Our crews are isolated for the summer made of September in these various locations so we take a lot of time to think about ways to improve their margins of safety. The islands and headlands are a spectacle of seabirds. More than 40 million seabirds of 30 different species nest on the refuge. Millions more visit here. There are more seabirds on the refuge than all the seabirds in the rest of North America. Just one colony on one island can be home to over one million birds and include 20 or more species. It's been said that sailors long ago listened for the clamor of bird calls to recognize headlands in the thick fog. It looks like beehive, I mean there's tens of thousands flying all over the place. It's just a loud place and a really amazing concentration of birds in the air and on the water. Such vast numbers are a sign that the waters of the North Pacific and Bering Sea are a rich soup, thriving with fish and plankton to feed on. The Tecla is headed out to field camps and annual study sites where refuge biologists monitor marine mammals and seabirds like the kittywakes and murs on St. George in the Pribilove Islands. Red-legged kittywakes are found throughout the Bering Sea and nowhere else in the world. Over 90% of the world's population nest on the last American refuge. This is fortunate because the refuge can offer protection to these species. Most of the black-legged kittywakes will nest in the same proximity to each other, often in clusters on the cliff faces. On St. George Island, refuge biologists work atop dramatic thousand-foot-high cliffs that hold multitudes of nesting birds. Murs are very colonial seabird, they nest in very dense numbers, they tend to come back to the same site once they've nested year after year after year, they keep the same mate, they only lay a single egg and raise a single chicken in the season. St. George is the largest mur colony in Alaska, there are probably 2 million murs nesting there and huge, huge numbers, ledges that go on for miles that have tens of thousands of murs on them. As the tech loss sails between islands, unexpected sites astonish even those with years of experience in the refuge. All of a sudden, all these birds appear and for the next 30 miles we see millions of sheer waters. The phenomenon of sheer waters coming all the way from New Zealand and Australia where they breed, they literally form flocks that you can see on the ship's radar and sometimes if you get into the big concentrations you can basically see them almost all the way to the horizon. Far out the illusion chain is Kiska Island, where a field camp is summer home for scientists researching aquasites. This way of aquasites at Kiska is truly unbelievable. They come in in such incredible numbers, this mass of these huge ribbons of birds flying in from the horizon to over your head and beyond, they darken the sky and beats of their wings in their calls is kind of a deafening sound. It's really kind of a spectacle in some ways, must have been like the passenger pigeons or the great herds of buffalo that are now gone. We have just the wildest guesses of populations in those cases, some estimates run from a million to 15 million in one single location. The most abundant is the leased aqua, there are certainly millions and millions of those. Prestid are the next most abundant. Prestid aquasites have this sort of tangerine odor about them which is kind of overpowering at Kiska because the numbers are so vast. Periket and whiskered are probably the most unique. They nest almost exclusively on refuge lands in Alaska. In the islands of the Four Mountains, Chaguluk rises ominously from the sea. There, U.S. Geological Survey biologists study one of the largest fulmar colonies in the world. There aren't any other species in our Alaska seabird assemblies that are quite like fulmars and you have to come to some pretty special places like Chaguluk to have any chance to see them or to work with them. This particular study we're doing, satellite telemetry and also some genetic work that we'll do back in the lab. The purpose is to determine which fulmars are being caught in long line fisheries so that's very serious for a very long lived species. These birds live for up to 40, 50 years naturally. We're putting satellite transmitters on the birds with harnesses. These are solar powered units which if we're lucky we could get data for the next three years. We're pursuing it fairly aggressively because we get just crucial information that we've never had access to. Where do these birds go seasonally because that's a crucial management question. The vast ocean reaches that separate islands can also separate populations of the same species for countless generations. We have a number of unique subspecies. They're isolated so long that they're just different. For instance I think we've got five or six different recognized subspecies of ptarmigan scattered along the Alaska Peninsula islands and out through the Aleutians. The Aleutian green winged teal, it's a teal that's a lot like the North American green winged teal but it has its habits that it nest on scattered islands through the Aleutians and that's the only place that it occurs. From Unimak Pass the tecla drops anchor at Iktak where rich ocean waters support dense colonies of tufted puffins. Iktak provides nesting sites for a whole suite of marine animals. The most common bird is tufted puffin. We estimate about a hundred thousand nesting here at Iktak. You might see thousands maybe ten thousand swirling around over Iktak and there might be thousands in the water right offshore at the same time these big rafts floating around on the sea. Iktak is also home to the tufted puffin's cousin, the horned puffin, which nests in notches in the rocks. On the Aleutian island of Ulak highly trained researchers conduct a survey of burrow nesting birds where they must employ the most obvious technique, gently reaching into the burrow to see what's living there. Like a Cassin's oculet or a fork-tailed storm petrel. Storm petrels are also found on St. Lazaria Island in the southeastern reaches of the refuge, in habitat far different from the treeless tundra of the Aleutians. Storm petrels are burrow nesters and they're able to survive here because the soil is loose enough for these tiny birds to be digging burrows into the soil. Well the storm petrel burrows are pretty tiny. We have two or three people who are looking for burrow entrances and once they find one they give it an individual number and then they reach in to see if there's a storm petrel occupying that burrow. And if there is then we know which species it is and if it might have an egg or a chick. It's only about a week old at the most. One of the reasons for having burrows is so that they can avoid predators such as crows, eagles, peregrine falcons. They also return to the islands just at night to help avoid predation. We collect data during the night as well because that's when the adults are most active in returning to the island or going out to see to feed. What we're doing then is netting some of the birds in what's called a mist net. The bird will hit the net and then it slides down into this little pocket so that it's held gently and then the researcher can go and remove the bird from the net and then collect the diet sample because these birds usually regurgitate their stomach contents. We collect diet samples so that we can see what prey is available to these birds out in the ocean and sampling to see what foods they're bringing back for their chicks. The Tekla is a floating field research site using hydroacoustic sonar, sampling and monitoring techniques. Biologists study the marine food web. They discover critical feeding areas, sample the undersea food base, and record the changing ocean environment, boguslov. This active volcano was first seen as it rose from a fiery underwater eruption two centuries ago. Although a young island, seabirds and mammals moved in and multiplied to incredible densities until recently when the sea lions mysteriously began to disappear from boguslov and throughout most of the refuge. Stellar sea lions have declined by about 80 percent and that's happened in about the last 20 years so they are now classified as an endangered species because of that serious population decline. There's a lot of research going on and I think it's fair to say that there's not agreement on exactly what the cause of decline is at this point. The food base may be inadequate to sustain populations and that that is a factor. There's also some question about what the role of predation is by killer whales, particularly on pups. Nevertheless it's very clear that the population has declined and not gone somewhere else. As mysterious as the disappearance of sea lions is the appearance of fur seals on boguslov even though they are declining elsewhere. When I first came here in 1973, everything you saw was stellar sea lions and not one fur seal and now there are thousands of northern fur seals. I don't know whether it's the situation where the fur seals could move in after the sea lions decline or whether the environment has changed and that now the fur seals have the advantage. The sea otter population worldwide was nearly extirpated during the commercial fur harvest in the 1700s. With the protection from the National Wildlife Refuge, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the International Fur Seal Treaty, this population really flourished. So it's a very shocking result to find that in recent surveys beginning in the 1990s the population for all of the Aleutian Islands has decreased by 70 percent. Simply the adults are disappearing. We need to understand what's going on in the whole system. What we're doing right now is continuing our monitoring effort and that's crucial to understanding whether the population is continuing to decline. It's crucial to understanding whether some areas are recovering or not. Sea otters are a very resilient animal and I think if we can keep their environment pristine, if we can keep enough of them around, they'll come back. It'll just take a little while. On hundreds of Aleutian Islands, scientists encounter evidence of Aleut villages and hunting camps. Their deep houses, called Barabaras, were ingeniously designed with whale bone rafters. The Aleut, also called Anangan, have lived off the abundance of the sea and the land for 9,000 years. Today, only a few villages, like Atka, remain. Yet the Anangan culture continues, still relying on the island's vast natural resources using their considerable knowledge of plants for food and medicine and the ways of animals and the natural world. Lured by the rich fur of sea otters and later fur seals, Russian explorers brought disease and oppression. Beginning with the voyage of Vitus Bering in 1741, Russians discovered the potential of riches in fur and the world of the Aleuts would never be the same. The native people tried unsuccessfully to defeat their invaders. Instead, the Russians forced the Aleut to do their hunting. The Russians also brought foxes to be harvested for their fur, setting them loose on islands that had no land predators. After the U.S. bought Alaska in 1867, fox farming and fur hunting took on a new zeal. Introduced foxes were devastating bird populations and sea otters were hunted to near extinction. By the early 1900s, it was apparent that wildlife needed protection and the first pieces of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge were established by President Teddy Roosevelt. Rusting away on refuge islands are the remains of what's been called the Forgotten War. Most people don't know that during World War II, the Aleutians played a strategic role in the Pacific. It was 1942. The Japanese bombed Dutch harbor on an Alaska Island, killing 43 people, then attacked and occupied the refuge islands of Kiska and Atu. To defeat Japanese forces and drive them from American soil, the U.S. military built defense outposts on islands throughout the refuge. After World War II, and up until the end of the Cold War, U.S. military bases continued to be maintained on the refuge. On Amchitka, during the Cold War of the 1960s and 70s, atomic bombs were detonated underground as tests. Today, there is only a small military presence on the islands. But the legacy of war has an ecological impact in spite of ongoing cleanup efforts. The aftereffects, PCBs, oil, fuel, nuclear waste, and unexploded ammunition are still a concern on the refuge. As is the invasion of rats, which first arrived on shipwrecked Japanese vessels over two centuries ago. Later, military ships spread rats to more islands, where they now prey on seabird eggs and chicks and destroy habitat. Rats are vicious predators, and they will eat birds. They will eat bird eggs. They pretty much destroyed the seabird colonies on the islands they were introduced to, and they probably had a tremendous impact on the nesting land's birds as well. To eliminate rats, the first thing we're trying to do is we're trying to prevent the introduction of rats to new islands, to islands where they haven't already gotten to. We are looking at the possibility of removing rats from rat island, the island that got rats back in 1780. And we expect, if we could do that, that we would get a substantial recovery of many seabird species and land birds. Non-native foxes, along with rats, are continuing threats to birds. On the treeless tundra of the Aleutian Islands, nesting birds evolved without land predators and have developed no natural defenses against them. When foxes were brought to the islands, they devastated bird populations. Since 1949, we've been eradicating foxes on one or more islands a year. The objectives are to eradicate all of the foxes and restore the islands to natural biodiversity. This is a program that's a part of a much larger worldwide effort. There has been a lot of interest in removing invasive species from islands where they occur and restoring islands back to their native habitat. Aleutian-Canada geese were believed to have disappeared, the first victim of the foxes. But refuge manager Bob Jones heard accounts of naturalist sightings. And in 1963, tracked down a remnant population on Bouldier Island, where foxes had never been introduced. Dedicated work continued for decades, removing foxes, transplanting geese to islands without foxes, and protecting the birds on their wintering grounds. Finally, the geese are considered recovered. We're here on Chagulek to look for Aleutian-Canada goose nests. We're conducting surveys of Aleutian-Canada geese as part of the five-year monitoring program, since the goose was delisted from the endangered species list in 2000. Listing on the endangered species list is often a one-way street. A species goes on to the list and never comes off it. Aleutian-Canada goose are a success story and one of the few examples of species formerly on the list that, through management actions, have been designated fully recovered. The success story of the geese is inspiration to the passionate scientists, dedicated to protecting and restoring all the native species in these wild and far-flung lands. I've had the privilege of flying over every island, rock, kelp bed in the entire Aleutian archipelago during the sea otter surveys. And there just wasn't a day when we were out doing those surveys that we didn't see something that made our mouth fall open and go, wow, look at this. First time I saw Sirius Point, the oculic colony, hundreds of thousands of oculets swirling around. And that's just a phenomenal scene. Seeing all the different sites of nature, seeing all the different landforms and volcanoes changing, supporting all the scientific work that's been conducted over the years. Boy, it's been one great adventure. My hope for the refuge for the future is to leave it in a better condition for future generations. When summer ends, the seabirds fly out across the ocean, and the scientists board the tecla for home. What they learn about the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and its creatures touches everyone on the planet. For their journey tells of the health of the ocean, ultimately linked with all life on Earth.