A struggling Bering Sea village loses one of its few remaining young men

Serge Lekanof's story is like many that reach the larger world though Alaska State Troopers' dispatches, the details flattened by official language. A young man in a village. A gathering with alcohol. He wandered out into the hazards of the cold and wilderness and disappeared. Some time later his body was found.

But for the 60 or so mainly Aleut villagers who live on the Bering Sea island of St. George, where Lekanof was one of only a half-dozen 20-something men, the discovery of his body on a beach below a steep cliff last Friday brings vivid grief.

"He was a contributor," said Patrick Pletnikoff, the mayor. "Folks in the community, we liked him."

St. George is a treeless island surrounded by a steep, rocky coastline, 750 air miles west of Anchorage. There is a store and a Russian Orthodox church and a scattering of weathered houses on a grassy slope. Just a few days ago, it snowed, blanketing everything with white.

Over recent years, the population has decreased and the school closed. There are only a few full-time jobs and many people struggle to make ends meet, Pletnikoff said. Diesel fuel is $7 a gallon. Food comes in by plane but often gets delayed. Elders rely on young men, including Lekanof, to hunt and fish and bring them birds, seals and halibut.

Lekanof was the second of five siblings. He and his brother Nathaniel spent his high school years on the neighboring island of St. Paul so he could attend school, said Mina-Ayesha Blair, who hosted the boys there. Lekanof served in the Army but returned to the village after a short tour, she said. His true love was science. Ever since high school, he'd been tapped to help out visiting scientists. He spent days observing seals, whales, birds and kelp along the beaches of the 35-square-mile island.

"He was an excellent research assistant," said Michelle Ridgway, a marine ecologist from Juneau. "He was a fun-loving, gentle, soft-spoken guy, always willing to lend a hand."

In 2014, Lekanof played a pivotal role in the discovery of a new beaked whale species, Berardius beringiae, on the island, Ridgway said. The whale's body appeared on an almost inaccessible beach at the bottom of a sheer cliff, she said. The water was so rough and the tides so extreme that its body kept appearing and disappearing before it could be examined. Lekanof figured out how keep it from getting taken by the tide.

"He helped first secure this whale skull and carry it across the very rough beach," she said.

The whale skull is now held by the Smithsonian, Ridgway said. Lekanof's body was found on an equally treacherous beach, she said. As of Thursday evening, because of the cliff and the tide, villagers were still working to recover his remains.

No friend or family member thinks Lekanof was suicidal, Blair said. He also wasn't known to party often. Beer and wine are legal in St. George but, like all groceries, alcohol isn't always available.

"I suspect that nobody in St. George knows what happened," Pletnikoff said.

The trail along the cliff where he was found has become unstable, Pletnikoff said. The highest tide has gotten higher over the last generation, and the storms are worse, he said. People say it has to do with climate change, Pletnikoff said. The waves eat at the cliffs in a way they didn't used to, forcing water into the rock.

"You can be a foot or two back, but at any time they can give," he said.

Lekanof pieced together temporary work like most of the men his age in the village, Pletnikoff said. He had a common frustration that there weren't enough jobs.

"For youngsters I think it would be pretty difficult. There's not many activities that are available for young people to engage in," Pletnikoff said. "The young lady population is not very large, probably two or three. Opportunities for getting together to raise families are very limited. That creates a big social problem."

Lekanof spent a lot of time with his older brother Nathaniel, 26, listening to music, playing video games and watching their favorite show, "The Big Bang Theory." The two of them liked to ride all the roads on their four-wheelers, Nathaniel said.

"He did have a couple friends he liked to hang out with too," Nathaniel said. "We all grew up together."

A couple of VPSOs and a state trooper came out Wednesday to help get his brother's body from the beach, he said, but his father told him he couldn't go to the cliff. The village is preparing for Serge's funeral. They have a brother at Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school in Sitka who can't get home and a sister in Anchorage, waiting to go into labor. Wood was brought over from St. Paul to make his brother's cross for the cemetery. Someone is at work on a casket.

"People been stopping by, some families been generous to make food for my parents," Nathaniel said.

The brothers' favorite ride took them 5 miles to the harbor, he said. There's a black sand beach, one of the only real beaches on the island. Their father has a bowpicker anchored out there. Last summer, he and Serge took it a half-mile out to fish for halibut, Nathaniel said.

"I'll miss talking to him," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Lekanof's body was found on the same beach where he had helped recover the body of a new species of whale. His body was found on a different beach, made inaccessible by the same conditions.