Photos: Bird biologists visit remote Aleutian island

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A skiff takes a wave over the bow as it returns for another load of supplies are moved to a research camp on Buldir Island as the US Fish and Wildlife Service research boat R/V Tiglax is on a weeklong voyage in the Aleutian Islands on Friday, June 5, 2015. The researchers and their supplies were dropped off earlier in the week and they hauled some the there supplies to the camp across the rocky beach. When seas moderated the Tiglax returned to transfer the rest of their supplies. 5 people were dropped off on the island including to research biologists from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Scientists on the R/V Tiglax conduct research in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

BULDIR ISLAND -- The night before Ryan Mong was scheduled to start his summer job on Buldir Island, the lanky 31-year-old ducked into the cargo hold of the federal research vessel Tiglax to make sure his supplies were in order.

"All these white boxes are the food that we've ordered from a distributor," Mong said, gesturing past gently swaying piles of waterproof Pelican cases. "Packed up the things we really like — nutritional yeast, the Srirachas, the stuff you just always have a lot of back home."

Mong was one of a handful of biologists hired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. They maintain nine field stations stretching from Southwest Alaska to Saint Lazaria Island near Sitka.

But Mong and his colleagues -- an adventurous couple, also in their 30s -- signed up for a special challenge. Their job was to spend more three months studying seabird nests on a windy speck called Buldir Island.

Located more than 300 miles west of Adak Island and 70 miles from the next nearest piece of land, Buldir is the most isolated island in the Aleutian Chain. It's also the most pristine; the fox-breeding operations that altered the ecologies of other islands never took here.

Without any threat from foxes, seabirds had free rein on Buldir. More species now build their nests among the island's jagged rock faces than any other location in the Northern Hemisphere.

The maritime refuge has been sending biologists into voluntary exile on Buldir each year since 1988. The program has become legendary among bird researchers such as Mong -- and the scientist who first clued him in during a field season in Arizona.

Read more: For bird biologists, the most remote Aleutian chain island is especially alluring