Fairway Rock

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For other places with the same name, see Fairway Rock (disambiguation).

Fairway Rock during the summer of 1986.

Fairway Rock is a small islet in the Bering Strait, located southeast of the Diomede Islands and west of Alaska's Cape Prince of Wales. It has an area of 0.3 km² (308,541 m², Census block 1047, Nome, Alaska). Known to Eskimo natives of the Bering Strait region in prehistory, Fairway was documented by James Cook in 1778 and named by Frederick Beechey in 1826. Although uninhabited, the island is a nesting site for seabirds — most notably the least and crested auklet — which prompt egg-collecting visits from local indigenous peoples. The United States Navy placed radioisotope thermoelectric generator-powered environmental monitoring equipment on the island from the 1960s through the 1990s.

1 Geography
2 Flora and Fauna
3 History
4 Footnotes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Geography

Satellite photo of the Bering Strait, showing Fairway Rock's proximity to Little Diomede Island (left), and Cape Prince of Wales (right).

The granite mass that is now Fairway Rock arose, like the larger nearby Diomede Islands, is the remnant of an earlier era of glaciation. [1]

Fairway Rock is situated 12 mi (19 km) SSE of Little Diomede Island and 20 mi (32 km) W of Cape Prince of Wales, at 65°37′N, 168°44′W.^[1] The island is variously reported as from 300 m ^[2] to 1.5 km in length. ^[1] Rising steeply from the surrounding waters to 534 feet above sea level, Fairway Rock can be easily seen from the mainland coast of Alaska at Cape Prince of Wales.^[3] Because of its steep cliffs, it poses no additional maritime hazard. ^[4] The Bering Strait around Fairway Rock is relatively shallow — about 50 m in depth — and oceanographic transects show the island to lie near a current velocity minimum for the strait. ^[5] Ocean currents north of Fairway Rock are occasionally studied as an example of a real-world system where a Von Kármán vortex street is generated.^[6]

Politically, Fairway Rock is part of the U.S. state of Alaska and lies inside Alaska's Nome Census Area and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Wildlife Conservation Unit 22E.^[7] It is within the Bering Sea Unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.^[8] Fairway Rock appears on USGS topographic maps in the Teller Quadrangle.^[9]

[edit] Flora and Fauna

Sparse vegetation atop the granite island seen during a U.S. Navy visit to Fairway Rock.

The island's bold cliffs are a haven for many migratory birds. The indigenous peoples who have lived nearby for thousands of years come to the island to gather bird eggs in the Spring. [2] [3] [4] and have continued to do so as recently as the 1990s. [5]

The island supports a breeding colony of about 35,000 seabirds, including some 25,000 Least and Crested Auklets. [6] In 1925, the Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata), Horned Puffin (Fratercula corniculata), Parakeet Auklets (Aethia psittacula), and Pallas' Murre (Uria lomvia arra) were reported at Farway Rock, nesting in the crevices of the island's cliffs. [7] A 1960 account reports that Eskimo inhabitants of Little Diomede reported a Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus) colony on Fairway Rock larger than that on Little Diomede. [8]

The Steller Sea Lion, an endangered species, may also breed on Fairway Rock. [9]

[edit] History

“	For the sake of convenience, I named each of these islands. The eastern one I called Fairway Rock, as it is an excellent guide to the eastern channel, which is the widest and best.	”
—Capt. Frederick William Beechey, Narrative of a voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Strait to cooperate with the polar expeditions: performed in His Majesty's ship Blossom, p. 337-338.

Fairway Rock was sighted by Captain James Cook on August 8, 1778. [10] It was named by the English naval officer and geographer Frederick William Beechey upon sighting the island in July 1826. Unlike the names he gave to the Diomede Islands, the name "Fairway" has persisted. ^[10]

Fairway Rock was passed and mentioned within the accounts of John Muir's voyager aboard the Corwin in 1881 ^[10] and Roald Amundsen aboard the Gjöa in 1906.^[11]

What is considered the last offensive action of the American Civil War happened in this area: the CSS Shenandoah fell upon a fleet of whalers working the waters near Alaska's Little Diomede Island and sank more than two dozen ships on June 22, 1865. This is chronicled in the book The Last Shot.^[12]

U.S. military perform maintenance on one of the radioisotope thermoelectric generators left atop Fairway to power environmental monitoring equipment.

In 1964, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Northwind visited the Rock, installing an unmanned oceanographic station in order to measure water flows across the Bering Strait. [11] [12]

On August 11, 1966, [13] the US Navy placed a strontium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) atop Fairway Rock for "powering environmental instruments". [14] [15]. The device, developed by Martin Marietta, was the first commercially-developed instrument of its kind deployed for unattended in-field use by the U.S. government. This use was cited in 1978 Congressional hearings on potential uses for nuclear waste. [16] In 1981 two additional RTGs were added. They were all removed from the island in 1995 [17] during a visit by the USS Salvor. [18]