300px|thumb|right|Fairway Rock in summer 1986

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&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup> (0.12&nbsp;mi<sup>2</sup>). 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.

Geography

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.

Flora and fauna

thumb|right|Sparse vegetation atop the granite island seen during a U.S. Navy visit to Fairway Rock

The island's bold cliffs are meant to be a haven for many migratory birds. However, the indigenous peoples who have lived nearby for thousands of years come to the island to take bird eggs in the spring and have continued to do so as recently as the 1990s.

right|250px|thumb|Fairway Rock during the spring of 1989.

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.

History

Discovery and establishment of outpost

Fairway Rock was sighted by Captain James Cook on August 8, 1778. It was named by the English naval officer and geographer Frederick William Beechey upon sighting the island in July 1826. Unlike the names he gave to the Diomede Islands, the name "Fairway" has persisted.

Fairway Rock was passed and mentioned within the accounts of John Muir's voyage aboard the Corwin in 1881

What is considered the last offensive action of the American Civil War happened in this area: the CSS Shenandoah fell upon a fleet of whalers working the waters near Alaska's Little Diomede Island and sank more than two dozen ships on June 22, 1865. This is chronicled in the book The Last Shot.

In 1964, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282) visited the rock, and installed an unmanned, propane-powered oceanographic station in order to measure water flows across the Bering Strait. Northwinds crew continued to help maintain the station until its closure.

The radioisotope thermoelectric generator

thumb|300px|U.S. military perform maintenance on one of the [[radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) left atop Fairway to power environmental monitoring equipment.]]

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.

See also

  • Rockall, a similar, even smaller rock island in the northern Atlantic Ocean

References

  • US Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory:
  • Summer 1986 Photo
  • Spring 1989 Photo
  • Full text of Hazardous and toxic waste disposal : joint hearings before the Subcommittees on Environmental Pollution and Resource Protection of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session https://archive.org/stream/hazardoustoxicwa01unit/hazardoustoxicwa01unit_djvu.txt