Yttygran Island

Yttygran (also Itygran or Ittygran, Russian Ыттыгран, Итыгран or Иттыгран, Yupik language Sikluk ) is an uninhabited, Russian island in the Bering Sea off the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula. It belongs administratively to Rajon Provideniya in the Autonomous District of the Chukchi.

Geography

Yttygran is right on the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula, from which the island is separated by the 5.3 kilometers wide here Senjawin Street, on the south by 1.5 km wide Tschijetschengkujym Street in the northwest. 4.4 km north of the larger neighboring island Arakamtschetschen, 2,3 km to the northwest is the island Kinkay. East Yttygran the bird cliffs Nuneangan is upstream. Yttygran is 13.8 km long, 6.4 km to the east, in the west, 2.3 kilometers wide.

Flora and Fauna

The predominant form of vegetation on the island is the tundra. There are in the field of Senjawin Street some endemic species, and American plants are from the other side of the Bering Strait to be found here.

In mammals come to Yttygran before the root vole, the Siberian lemming and arctic fox. The surrounding sea is rich in seasonal gray whales and belugas. Occasional guests are the killer whale and the bowhead whale. On the neighboring islands, there are walrus.

Yttygrans rocky coast offers a number of seabirds good breeding conditions. The colonies are formed mainly of thick -billed murres and. It also breed here but Meerscharben, glaucous gulls, kittiwakes, Taubenteisten, Horn Lunde and Tufted Lunde.

Walallee

Fyodor Petrovich Liitke charted the island in 1827 during his circumnavigation of the Senjawin. Yttygran was later repeatedly visited by European explorers, such as on 9-10. September 1881 by the brothers Aurel and Arthur Krause, who traveled the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula on behalf of the Bremen Geographical Society. Therefore, presented the discovery of Walallee (Russian китовая аллея ) in 1976, a scientific sensation represents the 400 m long "Avenue " near Cape Konowak on the north coast of the island consists of two parallel rows in groups arranged skulls (47 in total ) and as post into the ground plugged jawbone coming from Greenland whales. There are about 120 funnel-shaped storage pits for whale meat and blubber to an adjacent covered with rock scree slope. From the middle of the avenue a 50 m long stone path leads to a flat round square 4 to 4.5 m in diameter. The site is interpreted by anthropologists as a monumental prehistoric place of worship of the Eskimos and dated to the 14th to 16th centuries AD. However, the similarity of the Yupik name of the island, Sikluk, with the name of the storage pits ( siklugak ) also allows for the interpretation that it could have been a place where the whales were hunted geflenst and stored. The established whale bones would then have served as racks for drying the boats.