Cape Lewis is a promontory with a summit elevation of 1,222 feet (372 m) with steep sea cliffs located between Ukinyak Creek to the north and Kiliktakgot Creek to the south, 11 miles (18 km) south of Cape Lisburne on the Lisburne Peninsula, about 107 miles (172 km) southwest of Point Lay and 27 miles (44 km) north-northeast of Point Hope, Alaska. The Iñupiat traditionally gather murre eggs from the sea cliffs during late June to early July, and their name for the cape is ‘Irinik’, meaning falling rocks. The cape was first mapped in 1826 by Frederick W. Beechey on the HMS Blossom and named for Charles Lewis during the British Naval Exploring Expedition. Ukinyak Creek flows generally southwest for 8 miles (13 km), and Kiliktakgot Creek flows west for about 3 miles (5 km), both draining watersheds on the west flank of the Lisburne Hills in the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge. The seacliffs of Cape Lewis represent rocks from the Lisburne Group that is widely distributed across northern Alaska and consists of coal bearing shales with abundant fossilized plants and coral from the Paleozoic. The coal-bearing shales are overlain by thinly bedded limestones, black cherts and slates, which are in turn overlain by massive limestones.

Cape Lewis is within the Ann Stevens-Cape Lisburne Subunit, part of the Chukchi Sea Unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The Cape Lisburne Subunit supports a large seabird colony for breeding populations of common and thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes. Studies of the Cape Lisburne nesting colony were first conducted under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1976 to 1983. Smaller scale studies were continued from 1984 to 1998, and thereafter were part of the Refuge seabird monitoring program that includes a total of 10 sites located roughly 200 to 300 miles (300 to 500 km) apart. In 2017, the seabird colony in the Cape Lisburne Subunit was estimated to number about 400,000-500,000 murres, 20,000-30,000 black-legged kittiwakes, and a total of a few thousand pelagic cormorants, glaucous gulls, black guillemots, parakeet auklets, and horned and tufted puffins. The birds feed on large schools of sand lance that begin to appear in the Cape Lisburne nearshore surface waters at about the same time kittiwake eggs begin to hatch at the colonies in mid-July.

The Chukchi Sea is a shallow body of water overlying the broad continental shelf between northwestern Alaska and northeastern Siberia. Average depth is only about 164 feet (50 m) and tides along the eastern side average less than 1 foot (30 cm). Sea ice starts forming in October and open water becomes severely restricted by January or February. A combination of northward flowing currents and strong surface winds keeps a large dynamic lead, sometimes called the Chukchi Polynya, open between Bering Strait and the Point Barrow area all winter. This open water serves as an important spring migration route for large numbers of marine birds and mammals. In most years, ice cover begins breaking up about mid-June. The Chukchi Sea is also strongly influenced by Pacific Ocean waters transported northward seasonally by the Alaska Coastal Current. In years when Alaska Coastal Water development is strong and nearshore temperatures rise sufficiently, zooplankton abundance increases, resulting in sand lance becoming abundant, causing kittiwake productivity to markedly improve. However, if seasonal development of Alaska Coastal Water is poor and nearshore environments remain cold, strong inshore and along-shore runs of these fish either fail to materialize or are delayed, and surface-feeding kittiwakes have difficulty feeding and fledging chicks. Read more here and here. Explore more of Cape Lewis and Lisburne Peninsula here: