Sanak Island

Sanak lies south of the Alaska Peninsula, at the eastern end of the Aleutian island world. Unangan people lived here for thousands of years, leaving traces of many villages along a coast rich in fish and marine mammals. In 1778 James Cook's crew caught so many halibut that he called the group the Halibut Isles. Russian traders sought sea otters in the surrounding waters; in 1828 Russian administrators removed the island's inhabitants to Belkofski on the peninsula to maintain access to the hunting grounds.