Starokadomsky Island

Located in the southeast of the archipelago, between the Bolshevik island and the island of Small Taimyr .

Geographically divided into two parts connected by a relatively narrow isthmus. The southwestern part is hilly, heights from 20 to 41 meters, many streams and lakes. The northeastern part is lower, heights from 2 to 9 meters, mainly covered by swamps; there are few lakes and streams. ^[one]

The largest lakes of the island are Lake Lonely and Lake Zametnoe . The first is located almost in the middle of the north-eastern part, the second on the west coast of the south-western part. ^[one]

It is washed by the Laptev Sea . The island has two bays: Yakovkina Bay and Somneny Bay . ^[one]

The extreme southern point of the island is Cape Eternal , the extreme north is Cape May , the extreme western is Cape End . There are also two other named capes: Cape Zapadny ( Zametnoe Lake is located near it and Cape Torosny (it borders the Doubt Bay from the east). ^[1]

Most of the island is covered with ice, in the free areas of vegetation only mosses and lichens . In summer, birds fly to the island to nest. Of the animals there are polar bears and the endemic of the Laptev Sea - the Laptev walrus ( Odobenus rosmarus laptevi ). Since 1993, the territory of Starokadomsky Island, like the entire archipelago, became part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve . ^[3]

In 1913, the Taimyr and Vaigach icebreakers , under the command of Boris Vilkitsky, reached the northeastern shores of Severnaya Zemlya. On September 8, 1913, on foot exploration of Maly Taimyr Island, the expedition doctor Leonid Mikhailovich Starokadomsky was the first to see the island’s coast, later named after him, on the horizon. ^[4] However, the Vilkitsky team did not land on the island; the first to do this were members of the expedition of the Norwegian explorer Royal Amunsen in 1919 . The first accurate map of the island was made in 1930-1932 , when Soviet explorers, geographer Georgy Ushakov and geologist Nikolai Urvantsev , who made maps of the entire Severnaya Zemlya, visited here. ^[5]

• Kosa Pregradnaya is a long and narrow island sandy spit, framing the northern half of Starokadomsky Island from the western side ^[1] .
• Spit Protective - a similar spit on the eastern side of the northern part of the island ^[1] .
• Maisky Islands is a group of 9 islands north of Starokadomsky Island. They consist of two island braids long, the islands of Spring and another 6 nameless islands ^[1] .
• Islands without a name - in the bay of Doubt (the east coast) is a large nameless swampy island and several very small ones. In Yakovkina Bay (west coast) is another nameless small island ^[1] .