Between the Trinity Islands and Chirikof Island on 18 June, Cook's men collected a single tufted puffin. Later Cook passed close to the Semidi Islands and the Shumagin Islands and directly through the Sandman Reefs. Beaglehole's version of this part of the voyage makes no mention of seabirds.
There is a gap of 87 years during which there is almost no hint of published material bearing on the status of seabirds in the Gulf of Alaska. In 1865 the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition touched this area. Dall and Bannister (1869) provide us with a few scraps garnered during that expedition, primarily by Bischoff. The glaucous-winged gull _(Larus glaucescens)_ was described as the most common species from California northward. Bischoff's collections at Kodiak indicate that the horned and tufted puffins were collected with ease. He was able also to collect an Aleutian tern (_Sterna aleutica_--type specimen) along with an egg.
Dall (1873) noted in 1872 that the black-legged kittiwake _(Rissa tridactyla)_ was common at Round Island and Delarof Harbor, Unga Island, in the Shumagins. The inference is that it was more common at these two places than elsewhere. The Arctic tern _(Sterna paradisaea)_ was abundant in the Shumagin Islands and particularly at Range Island in Popoff Strait. Dall expressed the opinion that the horned puffin was very abundant in the Shumagins and appeared to fill the niche of the tufted puffin, which he did not see there. The only other bird which he thought to be very common was the pigeon guillemot. He did not note the common murre _(Uria aalge)_ at all.
In 1908 the second of three Alexander Expeditions conducted field work in the Prince William Sound area. From Dixon (1908) and Grinnell (1910) we can derive some basis for assessing status in a very general way. The most common seabird noted was the marbled murrelet. Glaucous-winged gulls and black-legged kittiwakes were common; the glaucous-winged gull was the more common. Horned puffins were judged to be slightly more common than tufted puffins by both authors. The northern end of Montague Strait appears to have been the center of abundance for puffins. Dixon noted that on 16 July 1908 there were swarms of puffins in the channel along Green Island. Pigeon guillemots were common along the rocky coasts. Parakeet auklets _(Cyclorrhyncus psittacula)_, common murres, and ancient murrelets were noted only in very small numbers.