Adventure in Siberia and Alaska

SIRENIKI, Siberia —  The craggy, mossy cliffs outside this rather ordinary-looking village are alive with the sounds of birds--thousands and thousands of nesting sea birds that return in summer to these fish-rich waters in the Russian Far East.

The expeditioners in the bobbing Zodiacs from Clipper Cruises’ 138-passenger World Discoverer have a bird’s-eye view of nesting murres that line up like penguins on their narrow rock ledges, their eggs balanced on the bare surface; kittiwakes, their graceful white wings dipped in black at the tips; long-necked black cormorants; big, raucous, gray-and-white glaucous gulls who lord it over the others by perching atop the highest rocks; stiff-winged fulmars who seem to soar about for the sheer exuberance of flying, and tiny least auklets who float on the swells of the iron-gray sea.

This gray, chilly, often rainy outing, while it wouldn’t thrill a sun-seeker, is a bird-watcher’s fantasy. Most of the 114 passengers aboard are Americans, but there is a sturdy contingent of birders from Britain, along with Germans, Swiss and Dutch, all bouncing around in the Bering Sea, binoculars and cameras at the ready.

The night before, in the twilight, we had gone ashore to the island of Yttygran, also known as Whale Bone Alley. At some time in the past, unknown people lined up the skulls and long, slender jaw bones of bow whales in a series of patterns along a shingle beach. Carbon testing of bone samples dates them to the late 17th Century, but no present indigenous tribe claims any knowledge of them.

Whale Bone Alley will be part of the new Beringia International Park now being developed as a joint project between the United States and Russia. It will preserve the historic and natural sites around the Bering Sea in both Alaska and the Russian Far East.

Another future Beringia site is the Pacific walrus “haul-out” at Arakamchechen Island, just off the coast near Provideniya. These huge 2,500-pound mammals, we are told, literally pull themselves onto the beach here and lie about in heaps.

The Siberian native tribes of Chukchi can legally hunt the walrus for subsistence, according to World Discoverer guest lecturer Nikolai Drozdov. Drozdov for 23 years hosted “The World of Animals” for 200 million viewers across Russia, and recently narrated “The Realms of the Russian Bear” series for PBS.

When he escorts us ashore to the Chukchi village of Yanrakynnot, he is a celebrity. We are met by an effusive Russian woman in a fur coat who looks like an Intourist guide in a minor Russian city. “Nikolai Nikolayevich,” she burbles, then clutches his hand. She turns out to be the wife of the manager of the state-run fox farm, the town’s biggest industry (and so far as we could see, the only one).

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The farm is a dismal collection of half a dozen rotting wooden buildings that resembled chicken houses on stilts, each holding several hundred fox cubs and adults. There are six to eight nervous arctic foxes crowded into each small, wire-floored cage, about pet-shop size. The stilts, we are told, are to protect the foxes from the town’s motley collection of sled dogs. The foxes are fed on walrus meat and shipped to Provideniya to be turned into silver fox coats.

The scenery in Provideniya, Russia’s main Bering Sea port, leaves a lot to be desired. Huge heaps of coal are dumped along the dock area for distribution to subsistence villages such as Yanrakynnot. Behind the dock area, the buildings of the town are terraced up a bare rocky hill.

From Provideniya, the ship continues for a visit to a village of Siberian Yupik people, now residents of Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island; to the remote and beautiful Pribilof Islands, the Aleutian Islands, and the Katmai Peninsula, where we get a good look at several brown bears fishing for salmon.

The World Discoverer is a comfortable expedition ship with all outside cabins, most of them on the small side; and pretty public rooms, including a big-windowed dining room where meals are prepared by an Austrian chef who uses a lot of cream, butter and cheese. Dress aboard is casual.

The next Russian Far East cruises aboard the World Discoverer are scheduled for July 8 and Aug. 9, 1994, between Homer and Nome, Alaska, with an itinerary similar to the one above; and July 20 and 30, round-trip from Nome, calling at most of the same ports but diverting north of the Arctic Circle for a look at the polar bears of Russia’s Wrangell Island. Prices for the 10- and 11-day cruises range from $3,500 to $7,150 per person, double occupancy, plus air fare.

To get more information about cruises to the Russian Far East, contact Clipper at (800) 325-0010.