George Steller was the ship’s naturalist on the Great Northern Expedition (1733–1743), led by Danish explorer Vitus Bering for the Russian Empire. During the voyage in 1741, Steller became one of the first Europeans to set foot on Alaskan soil (specifically Kayak Island). Discovery of a Sea Lion: While shipwrecked on Bering Island in late 1741, Steller observed and meticulously documented several marine species to survive the harsh winter. He wrote about the sea lion to which he gave his name: the Stellar’s Sea Cow. in his famous posthumous work, De Bestiis Marinis (“On the Beasts of the Sea”). He discovered many other animals during this journey which also bear his name, including:Steller’s Jay: A bright blue bird he used to prove the expedition had reached North America. The photo is of one I took in California a few years ago. Steller’s Sea Eagle: One of the largest eagles in the world.Steller’s Eider: A species of sea duck.
Steller died in 1746 at the age of 37, shortly after the expedition concluded, but his detailed observations remain foundational to the study of North Pacific biology.
Stellas Sea Cow is now extinct
Our past actions. Inform our present and shape our future.
Steller’s sea cow, was the quiet queen of a cold, kelp-filled kingdom. When George first described her in 1741, he beheld a marvel: a placid, ten-ton giant, nearly 30 feet long, grazing like a slow-moving mountain in the Arctic shallows. She had survived ice ages and ocean upheavals, a relic of a gentler time.
Then, the world knew about and found her.
What happened next was not a hunt, but a systematic erasure. Her trusting nature, her predictable grazing grounds, and the rich, lasting quality of her meat and fat made her the perfect resource for sailors and fur traders. They called her the “Arctic butcher shop”—a floating larder that could feed crews for weeks. Within 27 years of Steller’s pen touching paper describing the species the last sea cow was gone. Here was a creature, colossal and undeniable, observed by modern science—and then obliterated by modern commerce.Proof if needed humans could easily erase a species entirely. This was a century before Darwin framed life’s fragility in his Origin of Species.
Her story is a wound that never healed. It is the archetype of human-driven extinction: a gentle, isolated giant, perfectly adapted to its world, and perfectly defenseless against ours. She reminds us that remoteness is not protection, and that wonder, once discovered, is often met not with stewardship, but with a harpoon.
She is gone. But in her absence, she left a lesson written in salt and blood: that the line between discovery and destruction can be tragically, unforgivably thin.
The ability of an organism to change its characteristics in response to environmental variations is known as pheno-typic plasticity and is the key driving factor in the evolution of a species. eg; If a Holly finds its leaves are being eaten by herbivores it switches genes on to make them spiky when they regrow. So on taller Holly trees the upper leaves which are out of reach have smooth edges, while the lower leaves which where previously eaten and have regrown are prickly. Nature is just astoundingly wonderful … we should be watching her back and letting her flourish not suppressing or ignoring her.
We each have a role to play in defending her.
Letter From Norfolk 