Yarok Island
Yarok Island (Ostrov Yarok) is an island in the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. The island is located off the mouths of the Yana river, only a few kilometres towards the east.
Yarok Island is large and flat. It has many small lakes, swamps and sandbars. Its length is 38 km and its maximum breadth 26 km.
The Yana delta, the coastal area off which Yarok Island lies, is an extensive wetland zone. It is subject to severe Arctic weather with frequent gales and blizzards. Further north, the sea in the Yana Bay is frozen with thick ice for about eight months every year, so that Yarok is merged with the mainland.
Administratively Yarok Island belongs to the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) of the Russian Federation.
History
In 1712 Yakov Permyakov and his companion Merkury Vagin, the first recorded Russian explorers of the area, crossed the Yana Bay from the mouth of the Yana River to Bolshoy Lyakhovsky over the ice and explored the then unknown island. Unfortunately Permyakov and Vagin were killed on the way back from their exploration by mutineering expedition members.
In 1892–1894 Baron Eduard Von Toll, accompanied by expedition leader Alexander von Bunge, carried out geological surveys in the Yana delta area on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences located in Saint Petersburg.
References
Coordinates: 71°32′N 137°40′E / 71.533°N 137.667°E