The height of the 1737 tsunami on Bering Island revisited

摘要

On November 5, 1741, the packet boat St. Peter of the Second Kamchatka Expedition approached the previously unknown Commander Islands. On the next day, the first group of seafarers with the natural scientist Georg W. Steller among them landed on the desolate coast of Bering Island. He spent more than nine months with the ship's crew on the island, carefully studying and describing its flora and fauna. For over a quarter of a millennium, researchers around the world have been relentlessly analyzing the data collected by the great naturalist, first admiring his scientific heroism (for his research work could be called nothing else) and then accusing him of great mortal sin for the voluntary and involuntary extermination of arctic foxes, sea otters, and sea lions.