In 1743 Emilian Basov landed on Bering Island to hunt sea otter, beginning the island's documented human habitation as well as ecological destruction. Promyshlenniki began to island-hop across the Bering Sea to the Aleutian islands and ultimately Alaska. In 1825 the Russian-American Company transferred Aleut families from Attu Island to Bering Island to hunt, and another group of Aleut and mixed-race settlers followed the following year, thus establishing the first known permanent human habitation on Bering Island.[3] After Russia sold Alaska and the Aleutian islands to the United States in 1867, Bering Island was placed under the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky jurisdiction.