History, adventure, and science-the 18th century naturalist, Georg Steller, sailed to the north coast of North America and introduced its biological wonders to the world.

* Introduces a naturalist and explorer who predated Lewis and Clark and John Muir * Examines the historical legacy of the man whose name graces the Steller's jay, Steller sea lion, Steller's eider, and more * Places Steller's journey in context for today, following the impact of his discoveries to the present In 1741, a Russian expedition ship captained by Vitus Bering carried the first scientist to set foot anywhere on the western half of North America. Georg Steller would introduce the world to the staggering wealth and diversity of life of the North Pacific, providing the first European accounts of the sea otter, sea lion, northern fur seal, native Alaskan Chugach people, and more. Steller's Island is a fascinating tale of the rewards and perils of exploration in this era. It is about the courage of scientific curiosity, even in uncharted waters, alien lands, and desperate circumstances, including storms, scurvy, and shipwreck. Steller traveled deep into the wild with little on his back. In the one day Bering permitted him to explore Kayak Island along the southern Alaskan coast, he catalogued more than one hundred previously unknown plants. He was the only European naturalist to see the spectacled cormorant alive and his is our one and only account of the now extinct Steller's sea cow. In accounts of the Chugach and Aleut people, Steller was the first scientist to hypothesize an Asian origin for Native Americans. The crew of the St. Peter credited him with their lives: His novel prescription of wild greens cured their scurvy, and his knowledge of sea mammals and Native hunting techniques meant food for the starving.

Translated from the logs and journals. Includes a chart of the voyage of Bering and Chirikov in the St. Peter and the St. Paul from Kamchatka to the Alaska coast and return, 1741, based on the log books and other original records and adjusted to known physical conditions by Ellsworth P. Bertholf (v.1).

After Astro, an orphaned Steller sea lion, was rescued by scientists at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, his attachment to people made him unable to be returned to the ocean and he now lives at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.

New translation based completely on a surviving copy of Steller's 1743 manuscript that details the exploration of Alaska.

A packet of letters discovered in the frame of an eighteenth-century Chinese painting starts a search in western Alaska for a remarkable orchid.

Steller's classic work, published in Latin in 1751 and in German in 1753, contains the only scientific description from life of the Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), as well as the first scientific descriptions of the fur seal or "sea bear" (Callorhinus ursinus), Steller's sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), and the sea otter (Enhydra lutris). Steller's sea cow was a sirenian, or manatee, inhabiting the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. It was first discovered by Europeans in 1741 and rendered extinct by 1768. It was a 30-foot long, plant-eating aquatic mammal, weighing up to 12 tons, that lived in large herds on the coasts of Alaska and Kamchatka. Steller made his observations as part of Vitus Bering's second voyage, during which the crew was shipwrecked for 9 months on Bering Island, from November 1741 to August 1742.

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history.