The Commander Islands - an archipelago of four islands in the southwestern part of the Bering Sea in the Pacific Ocean. Administratively, they are part of the Aleutsky District of the Kamchatka Krai of Russia. They are named after the navigator commander Vitus Bering, who discovered them in 1741. You can reach the Commanders by air and sea. The fastest option is to fly from Elizovo Airport (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky). From there, a plane flies to the village of Nikolskoye several times in the summer and 1-2 times in the other seasons. Large rookeries of marine mammals are protected here, where up to 300,000 animals live, along with North Pacific marine ecosystems, a unique population of blue foxes, and nesting sites of rare and economically valuable bird species. Amazing animals live on the Commander Islands - sea otters, or kalan. Up to one and a half meters long, they spend almost their entire lives in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean: eating using their stomachs as tables, sleeping, and even giving birth. They don't like loneliness, gathering in groups for safety. To avoid losing each other, they hold paws. A mother can tie her baby to herself using seaweed. Sea otters hold paws while sleeping to avoid being swept away by currents. They are one of the rare species on our planet that can use tools. In addition to seaweed, they use, for example, stones as hammers to break oysters for their lunch. Sea otters have almost no subcutaneous fat, being warmed only by their thick fur: over 40,000 hairs per square centimeter. In past centuries, their fur was highly sought after, leading to near-extinction. Hunting was banned only at the beginning of the 20th century, but today, besides poachers, their population is affected by the environmental situation in the ocean. By the way, in olden times, the sea otter was called the Kamchatka beaver, which is incorrect. Sea otters are predators, belonging to the family Mustelidae, like sables and otters.