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Island Natural Resources
William Setchell (1899), under the auspices of the U.S. Commission on Fur Seals and the Fur-Seal Islands, provided the most complete summary of Pribilof Islands marine algal flora prior to 1979. Setchell’s summary included descriptions of four green algae, ten brown algae, and twenty-one red algae. During the 1970s, as the eastern Bering Sea was considered for oil and gas development, the need for baseline data prompted studies of intertidal and subtidal algae about the Pribilof Islands. Algae identified from subtidal collections made at St. George, St. Paul, and Otter Islands and one intertidal collection made at Zapadni Bay on St. George included five green algae, twelve brown algae, and thirty-eight red algae species (Calvin 1979). Thirty of the species were new records for the Bering Sea. O’Clair et al. (1979) investigated intertidal algae community composition and species distribution and abundance at seven Pribilof Islands’ sites. They concluded that species diversity is low where the frequency of sea ice scouring is high and that the relationship is likely causative. Species richness of most major taxa was significantly lower in the Pribilof Islands than at Amak and Akun Islands where ice had not recently scoured the shores.
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