The impact of climate change on St. Paul Island: a community in crisis

THIS tiny island in the middle of the Bering Sea had recently completed its longest winter stretch in recorded history with above-freezing temperatures — 343 consecutive hours, or 14 days - when Aaron Lestenkof drove out to look at Sea Lion Neck.

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It was another warm February day. He saw no sea ice; scant snow on the ground. Lestenkof is one of the sentinels on the island, a small team with the Aleut tribe who monitor changes to the environment across these 43 square miles of windswept hills and tundra. He is also one of 338 residents who still manage to live on St. Paul, something that has become significantly more complicated as the Bering Sea warms around them.

Over the past decade, steadily warming waters have thrown the North Pacific into turmoil, wiping out populations of fish, birds and crabs, and exposing coastlines to ever more battering from winter storms. The upheaval in the waters has brought so much change to this remote island, where residents still fill their freezers with reindeer and seals, that it has forced many to consider how long they can last.

The warm waters killed off about 4 million common murres - the largest die-off of any bird species ever recorded in the modern era — including almost 80% of those that nested on St. Paul. They wiped out about 10 billion snow crabs; caused the collapse of the main Alaskan fishery that relied on them; and prompted the closing, three years ago, of St. Paul’s largest source of tax revenue, a Trident Seafoods crab processing plant.

City funds fell by 60%. The number of city employees dropped from 43 to 18. The police force disbanded. People moved away. And prices, already high, rose further at the island’s lone grocery store.

The experience of St. Paul shows how changes to the climate, incremental until they become unmistakable, can ripple through the social fabric. Once a bustling winter hub for crab processing, with stately homes built in the 1920s and a historic Russian Orthodox church, St. Paul is quieter now.