Gull Island is roughly 633 feet (193 m) long and 93 feet (28 m) high and is located about 0.6 miles (1 km) northwest of Moosehead Point near the entrance to Peterson Bay on the southeastern shore of Kachemak Bay, roughly 17 miles (27 km) northeast of Seldovia and 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Homer, Alaska. William H. Dall of the US Geological Survey named the island in 1895 for its seabird colony. The island is mostly bedrock representing the McHugh Complex, which developed between the Triassic and Early Cretaceous periods (about  250 million to 100 million years ago) and consists of basalt and chert. The basalt is pillowed and overlain by complexly folded and faulted radiolarian chert. This rugged island hosts one of the most productive seabird colonies in the Gulf of Alaska at a time when other colonies have experienced widespread reproductive failure. Despite its small size, it supports a large and diverse seabird population. Both Gull Island and nearby Sixty Foot Rock belonged to the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge until 1987, when they were conveyed to the Seldovia Native Association.

The archaeological record shows that seabirds have been an important food resource for thousands of years, especially in spring before spawning fish arrive. All coastal Alaska Native cultures engaged in seabird hunting and egg collecting, and nesting colonies were part of traditional territories. The meat and eggs were eaten and sometimes traded. Bird skins were used to make clothing and food-storage bags; beaks and feathers ornamented regalia; and bones were fashioned into needles, tubes and whistles. Seabirds were hunted year-round with bird darts and throwing boards, or with snares, bows and arrows, bolas or nets. Bag nets, long poles or multi-pronged spears were sometimes used along the water’s surface. Some cultures would climb cliffs or lower themselves down to obtain seabirds and eggs from nests in rookeries. Some villages organized boat trips to nearby islands to hunt seabirds during the molting period, when birds were temporarily unable to fly. Eggs were eaten both fresh and preserved in seal oil. In 1916 these traditional practices ended when the Migratory Bird Treaty, the first of several international treaties, was enacted to control the decline of bird populations caused by commercial hunting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The treaty aimed to protect migratory birds by prohibiting hunting and egg collecting during spring and summer while allowing variable levels of fall sport hunting.

Gull Island has a thin cover of soil that mostly supports pushki (or cow parsnip) and stinging nettle. The main island and two smaller islets, locally called Murre Rock and Gorilla Rock, provide nesting habitat for pelagic cormorants and red-faced cormorants, glaucous-winged gulls, black-legged kittiwakes, common murres, pigeon guillemots, horned puffins, and tufted puffins. Most murres breed on Murre Rock and glaucous-winged gulls nest on the main island. Gorilla Rock is used mostly by roosting gulls and cormorants. Gull Island is the third-largest seabird colony in Cook Inlet and one of the most productive, most likely because of its remote location with minimal predation and proximity to abundant forage fish such as capelin, walleye pollock and Pacific sand lance. As many as 20,000 seabirds build nests in the craggy rock faces and cliffs of Gull Island. In most years up to 10,000 black-legged kittiwakes dominate the rookery, building mud nests perched in clefts and on ledges. Over 5,000 common murres nest amid the kittiwakes. Bald eagles hunt here, and when these predators dive toward the colony the effect is chaotic cacophony as thousands of birds take wing at once. The Seldovia Native Corporation restricts access and the public is not allowed onshore. The use of remote cameras for viewing the birds was pioneered by the Pratt Museum in Homer. View the seabird cam here. Read more here and here. Explore more of Gull Island and Kachemak Bay here: