In the summer of 1741, Captain Vitus Bering and a naturalist named George Willhelm Steller set out with a large crew on a daring expedition to discover a route between Asia and America within the northernmost part of the Pacific Ocean—a cold area of water now known as the Bering Sea. The voyage takes weeks, and the crew suffers many hardships as their supplies dwindle and disease spreads and there is no sign of land in sight. With no other choice but to risk death going forward or risk death returning home, the expedition turns back and maroons upon an unknown shore where Steller and the surviving crew encounter a mysterious, and ginormous, sea cow.
The crew is shipwrecked on the island for nearly a year. In this time, Steller begins to document and observe the sirenian creature that would become known as Steller’s sea cow. Per his records, the sea cows are friendly, social creatures who are often seen playing with each other throughout the island’s chilly coves—aloof and unthreatened by their human observers. They are buoyant, able to peacefully float on their backs with their stomach to the sun in the sky. The sea cows have a thick layer of blubber encompassing their round bodies, and some measure nearly 30 feet in length. To further his research, Steller captured and killed a mother sea cow. Her young cried after her loudly, paddling behind the boat that dragged her large, wet body onto the cold, dry shore. Over days and weeks Steller dissected the mother sea cow’s body, cleaned her bones, and organized her inner organs—measuring and documenting everything into what would become the one true anatomical account of Steller’s legendary sea cow.
Throughout the 11 months the crew is stranded, they excessively hunt otters, foxes, and birds to stay alive – but none of the island’s inhabitants satisfied them quite like the meat and blubber of the sea cows. Eventually, the marooned explorers are able to reassemble a boat from the wreckage of their old ship and escape the island. Upon the crew’s return to Russia, Steller’s big, friendly sea cow would be hunted to extinction within three decades after their discovery. The idea of them, the ghost story of their existence, haunts the narrative for the bulk of Iida Turpeinen’s factual but poetic novel Beasts of the Sea.
Turpeinen connects three different centuries of research and fascination by linking the lives of real men (and less remembered, but more interesting women) of different historical caliber who all shared the same imperative need to be remembered somehow. From Stellar’s discovery of his sea cow, to a 19th-century Russian governor of the Alaskan colony who abuses his power over native peoples in attempts to find proof of the sea cow’s survival, to the visions of a restorer at the Finnish Museum of Natural History who sincerely seeks to preserve the legacy of the legendary beast in 1952.
In every section of the story, Turpeinen writes in the present tense, allowing the reader to understand more accurately the ways of the world, the state of human progress, within that time period. As readers, we come to appreciate the prodigious levels of meticulousness, time, skill, and attention to detail it once required to document a species as three generations of scientists attempt to capture the world around them. Turpeinen’s writing has an eerie way of showing us, rather than telling, how tightly an iron chain links human advancement to earthly destruction.
Our many societies and cultures exist within a reaction to the actions of the worst of us. Across the globe, it is typical for a mere human, wherever or whoever they are, to leave their homeland either by force or as a means of survival – to seek better opportunities or a new path forward. Earth is covered in imaginary lines as a result of seeking efficiency. Everything we encounter, or interact with on an average day, is a direct result of what we had before not being good enough. It is in our nature to grow, but we have a habit of destruction in the process. The absolute necessity of remembrance, preservation, research, to understand what was–whether that is within a museum or within a novel—is just one cost of our progress.
Turpeinen writes:
“In English and French, a species is extinguished, life dwindles, smoulders and is eventually snuffed out, while in Swedish a species is pulled up by the roots, eradicated from the earth like weeds from a garden, but the Finnish, ‘sukupuutto’ does not mean the death of all individuals. In Finnish, even the last sea cow floating in the water has experienced ‘sukupuutto’, its lack of a mate. Blood still flows through its veins, its nerves still send neurological impulses to its limbs, but as it swims from one cove to the next looking for one of its own kind, it has already encountered the greatest, most profound, loneliness of all, the lack of its kin, and its species reaches an end long before a bullet pierces its eye.” Beasts of the Sea is a work of translation, originally written in Finnish. In English, “beast” can have a negative connotation–referring to something of a savage nature, something unknown, maybe vicious, perhaps with a countenance possessing ill-intent. Our visions of Steller’s sea cow exist only through the account of a long dead man’s memory and the research that succeeded him. But through this novel, I can imagine the sea cow’s peace in the cold water, and how it was good enough for them. I can feel their smooth backs, look into their deep, black eyes. I can hear their slow glide through the waves, picture the vastness of their tremendous, humble size. I can interpret their gentle curiosity as strange people rolled passed on big wooden boats. If asked, I can point to who the beasts are.
FICTION
Iida Turpeinen
Little Brown and Company
Published on November 18, 2025
