Tyuleny Island (Sea of Okhotsk)

Tyuleny Island (Ostrov Tyuleniy) is a small island in the Sea of Okhotsk, east of Russia's Sakhalin Island, in Northeast Asia.[1] It is also called Kaihyo Island (海豹島) .[2]

This article is about the island in the Sea of Okhotsk. For other similarly named islands, see Tyuleny Island.
Tyuleny
Тюлений
Island
Northern fur seal rookery on the Island beside a bird colony.
Northern fur seal rookery on the Island beside a bird colony.
Location of Tyuleny Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Location of Tyuleny Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.
CountryRussian Federation
Federal subjectSakhalin Oblast
Elevation
18 m (59 ft)

Geography

The island is administered by Sakhalin Oblast, in the Russian Far East District of the Russian Federation. It was within the Karafuto Prefecture of Imperial Japan from 1905 to 1945.

Tyuleny Island is located off the eastern side of the Gulf of Patience, 19 kilometres (12 mi) to the south of Cape Patience (Mys Terpeniya), off the coast of the southern end of the Terpeniya Peninsula of eastern Sakhalin Island.[3] It is 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) long and 19 metres (62 ft) wide.

History

Fur seals were hunted on the island between 1854 and 1897. Over 100,000 were caught, with over half being taken illegally by foreign vessels. This led to the seizure of several schooners by Russian men-of-war in 1884 and 1891, including the arrest of a party of seventeen men left by a British vessel in 1895.[4]

Fauna

There are many seals on Tyuleny's shores and in its surrounding waters, hence its name which means "seal" in the Russian language.[5] It was formerly called "Robben Island," from the Dutch name for seal. [6]

In the spring and summer seabirds nest on the island, including crested, parakeet and rhinoceros auklet, common and thick-billed murre, black-legged kittiwake, ancient murrelet, and tufted puffin.[7]

The "Tyuleny Virus", a group B arbovirus, was recovered in 1969 on Tyuleny Island from ticks on birds.[8]

References
  1. Worldcitydb.com: Geographic data
  2. 樺太 海豹島
  3. "楽天が運営するポータルサイト ： 【インフォシーク】Infoseek". infoseek.co.jp.
  4. Jordan, David Starr (1898). The fur seals and fur-seal islands of the North Pacific Ocean. Washington, Govt. Print. Off.
  5. "Tyuleniy island". earthplatform.com.
  6. Win.tue.nl: former Robben Island name
  7. Kondratyev, A. Y., Litvinenko, N. M., Shibaev, Y. V., Vyatkin, P. S., & Kondratyeva, L. F. (2000). "The breeding seabirds of the Russian Far East". Seabirds of the Russian Far East, 37-81.
  8. "Isolation of tyuleniy virus from ticks ixodes (Ceratixodes) putus Pick.-camb. 1878 collected on Commodore Islands". Archiv für die gesamte Virusforschung. 38: 139–142. doi:10.1007/BF01249663.
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48°30′N 144°39′E


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