North Pacific High Sea

The southern Bering Sea stretches from the Aleutians toward the Pribilof Islands, across waters frequented by migrating fur seals. Unangan oral history remembers the northern islands before Russian arrival, though they had no permanent settlements there. In the 1780s Russian hunters located the seals' great breeding colonies and moved Unangan workers from the Aleutians to the Pribilofs, tying the two groups of islands together through a harsh new trade.