Беринг бұғазындағы аралша: Фэрвэй тасы

Islet in the Bering Strait

other places with the same name

Fairway Rock (Census block 1047, Nome, Alaska) is a small islet with mostly vertical rock faces in the Bering Strait, located southeast of the Diomede Islands and west of Alaska's Cape Prince of Wales. Part of Alaska, a U. S. state, the islet has an area of 0.3 km2 (0.12 mi2). Known to Inuit of the Bering Strait region in prehistory, Fairway was documented by James Cook in 1778 and named by Frederick Beechey in 1826. Although uninhabited, the island is a nesting site for seabirds — most notably the least and crested auklet — which prompt egg collecting visits from local indigenous peoples. The United States Navy placed radioisotope thermoelectric generator powered environmental monitoring equipment on the island from the 1960s through the 1990s.

The granite mass that is now Fairway Rock, like the larger nearby Diomede Islands, is the remnant of an earlier era of glaciation. Fairway Rock is situated SSE of Little Diomede Island and W of Cape Prince of Wales, at The island is variously reported as from to in length. Because of its steep cliffs, it poses no additional maritime hazard. The Bering Strait around Fairway Rock is relatively shallow — about in depth — and oceanographic transects show the island to lie near a current velocity minimum for the strait. Ocean currents north of Fairway Rock are occasionally studied as an example of a real world system where a Von Kármán vortex street is generated. Fairway Rock lies inside Alaska's Nome Census Area and Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Conservation Unit 22E. It is conveyed to Inalik Native Corporation. Fairway Rock appears on United States Geological Survey topographic maps in the Teller Quadrangle.

The island's bold cliffs are a haven for many migratory birds. The indigenous peoples who have lived nearby for thousands of years come to the island to gather bird eggs in the spring. and have continued to do so as recently as the 1990s. The island supports a breeding colony of about 35,000 seabirds, including some 25,000 least auklets and crested auklets. A 1960 account reports that Eskimo inhabitants of Little Diomede reported a glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) colony on Fairway Rock larger than that on Little Diomede. The Steller sea lion may also breed on Fairway Rock.

On August 11, 1966, the US Navy placed a strontium powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) atop Fairway Rock for "powering environmental instruments". At this time Commander John C. LeDoux was in charge of NavFac's shore based nuclear power program, whose over 200 trained men only had one power plant to run. With a new NavFac Chief taking over soon, Commander LeDoux feared the program might be cancelled if it had no other applications. In his memoir LeDoux writes that, "like good marketers we produced a catalog of what was available and sent it to all Navy commands." In the end, the project only took 10 days and "was done with no money or paperwork – mostly phone calls and personal visits." LeDoux was impressed that a project involving so many disparate military and non military parties could be carried off in such a short span of time. of Fort Wainwright, AK. The three RTGs were transported from Fort Wainwright, AK to the Richland Consolidation Facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state for disposal.