The largest know Cormorant ever to have existed was the spectacled cormorant or Pallas’s cormorant Phalacrocorax perspicillatus it inhabited Bering Island and possibly other places in the Komandorski Islands and the nearby coast of Kamchatka in the far northeast of Russia. It was described as large, clumsy and almost flightless although it was probably reluctant to fly rather than physically unable, Georg Steller in 1741 write that “they weighed 12–14 pounds, so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men.” Apparently cormorants are normally unpalatable, Steller said “this bird tasted delicious, particularly when it was cooked in the way of the native Kamtchadals, who encased the whole bird in clay and buried it and baked it in a heated pit” The population declined quickly after further visitors to the area started collecting the birds for food and feathers, reports of whaling grounds and large populations of Arctic foxes and other animals with valuable pelts led to an influx of whalers and fur traders into the region; the last birds were reported to have lived around 1850 on Ariy Rock islet, off the northwestern tip of Bering Island.

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