The island was sighted on 5 November 1741 by
Bering and his crew while returning from the expedition during which he found America from the west, but he did not land on this island. The Russian naval officer and historian Vasily Berch believed that Yemelyan Basov reached this island in 1745, during his second of four expeditions to the Commander Islands between 1743 and 1749, and that most of the furs he brought back to Kamchatka in 1745 were hunted on this island. Towards the end of the 19th century, the settlement of
Preobrazhenskoye was established by Aleuts who moved there from
Attu Island. According to linguists, the island's residents spoke a creole language, known as the
Mednyj Aleut language, which combined Russian and Aleut vocabulary and grammar. In 1970, all citizens of the island were moved to neighboring
Bering Island. Until 2001, the island was occupied as a frontier post. Since then, the island has been completely uninhabited. Scientific studies of the fauna and flora are conducted annually. ==Ecology==