Saint Lazaria

Just off the coast from Sitka, at the mouth of Sitka Sound, sits a small volcanic island that hundreds of thousands of seabirds call home. Saint Lazaria has been protected since 1909, and few people ever set foot on it. The ones who do usually come to count. I followed a team of researchers there as they checked burrows and tracked the island's rhinoceros auklets, odd little seabirds that grow a horn on their bill each breeding season and come home at dusk with their beaks full of fish. How the auklets are doing on Saint Lazaria helps show how the ocean around them is doing.

Images made in support of the Sitka Conservation Society.