* 1875 – The Treaty of Saint Petersburg between Japan and Russia is ratified, providing for the exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands.

Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means " human " ( particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings ), basically neither ethnicity nor the name of a race, in the Hokkaidō dialects of the Ainu language ; Emishi ( Ebisu ) and Ezo ( Yezo ) ( both ) are Japanese terms, which are believed to derive from another word for " human ", which otherwise survived in Sakhalin Ainu as enciw or enju.

The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kuril islands and the island of Hokkaidō and Northern Honshū, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honshū and as far north as the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in what is now Cape Lopatka.

The main feeding habitat of the western Pacific subpopulation is the shallow ( 5 – 15 m depth ) shelf off northeastern Sakhalin Island, particularly off the southern portion of Piltun Lagoon, where the main prey species appear to be amphipods and isopods.

Offshore gas and oil development in the Okhotsk Sea within 20 km of the primary feeding ground off northeast Sakhalin Island is of particular concern.

Of this, uses a broad rail gauge of, while a narrow gauge of is used on a 957-km ( 595-mile ) stretch of railway on Sakhalin Island.

# The above, plus Sakhalin Island, which is generally included on Chinese maps as part of Outer Manchuria, even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the Treaty of Nerchinsk.

The Sea of Okhotsk () is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, the island of Hokkaidō to the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberian coast ( including the Shantar Islands ) along the west and north.

It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf and the Gulf of Tartary ; on the south, through the La Pérouse Strait.

Oceanic water in Avacha Bay and adjacent bays is also warmer than coastal waters of Kuril Islands and Okhotsk sea coast ( except Southern Kuriles and Southern Sakhalin ).

Sakhalin (, ; also known as Kuye (); Japanese: or ) or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45 ° 50 ' and 54 ° 24 ' N.

It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast.

Sakhalin, which is about one fifth the size of Japan, is just off the east coast of Russia, and just north of Japan.

Sahaliyan, the word that has been borrowed in the form of " Sakhalin ", means " black " in Manchu and is the proper Manchu name of the Amur River ( sahaliyan ula, literally " Black River " ; see Sikhote-Alin ).

There is some evidence that the Ming eunuch admiral Yishiha reached Sakhalin in 1413 during one of his expeditions to the lower Amur, and granted Ming titles to a local chieftain.

Sakhalin is separated from the mainland by the narrow and shallow Mamiya Strait or Strait of Tartary, which often freezes in winter in its narrower part, and from Hokkaidō, ( Japan ) by the Soya Strait or La Pérouse Strait.

Sakhalin is the largest island in Russia, being long, and wide, with an area of.

One theory is that Sakhalin arose from the Sakhalin island arc.

Nearly two-thirds of Sakhalin is mountainous.

The fact that it is not connected was conclusively established by Mamiya Rinzō, who explored and mapped Sakhalin in 1809 and definitively recorded by Russian navigator Gennady Nevelskoy in 1849.

The southern half of Sakhalin was acquired by Japan as a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 – 05, but at the end of World War II in 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan and took possession of the Kuril islands and southern Sakhalin.

The first problem that caused the pause in reconnaissance flights took place on August 30, an Air Force Strategic Air Command ( SAC ) U-2 flew over Sakhalin Island in the Far East by mistake.

Most of the Sea of Okhotsk, with the exception of the Sakhalin Island, had been well mapped by 1792

Mamiya Rinzō and Gennady Nevelskoy determined that the Sakhalin was indeed an island separated from the mainland by a narrow strait.

Sakhalin was claimed by both Russia and Japan in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, which led to bitter disputes between the two countries over control of the island.

According to Yuanshi, the official history of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols militarily subdued the Guwei ( 骨嵬, Gǔwéi ), and by 1308, all inhabitants of Sakhalin had surrendered to the Mongols.

Following the introduction of Chinese political and commercial institutions in the Amur region, by the middle of the 15th century the Sakhalin Ainu were making frequent tributary visits to Chinese-controlled outposts.

This map from a 1773 atlas, based on the: commons: File: CEM-44-La-Chine-la-Tartarie-Chinoise-et-le-Thibet-1734-Amur-2572. jpg | earlier work by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d ' Anville | d ' Anville, who in his turn made use of the information collected by Jesuit missions in China | Jesuits in 1709, asserts the existence of Sakhalin — but only assigns to it the northern half of the island and its northeastern coast ( with Cape Patience, discovered by Maarten Gerritsz Vries | de Vries in 1643 ).

As a result, many 17th century maps showed a rather strangely shaped Sakhalin, which included only the northern half of the island ( with Cape Patience ), while Cape Aniva discovered by de Vries and the " Black Cape " ( Cape Crillon ) were thought to be part of the mainland.

A katorga ( penal colony ) was established by Russia on Sakhalin in 1857, but the southern part of the island was held by the Japanese until the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg ( 1875 ), when they ceded it to Russia in exchange for the Kuril Islands.

South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as Karafuto Prefecture (), with the capital Toyohara, today's Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and had a large number of migrants from Korea.

The Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on 25 August 1945 by occupying the capital, Toyohara.

Japan renounced its claims of sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Treaty of San Francisco ( 1951 ), but claims that four islands currently administered by Russia were not subject to this renunciation.

On September 1, 1983, the Korean Air Flight 007, a South Korean civilian airliner, flew over Sakhalin and was shot down by the Soviet Union, just west of Sakhalin Island, near the smaller Moneron Island ; the Soviet Union claimed it was a spy plane.

The capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a city of about 175, 000, has a large Korean minority, typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans, who were forcibly brought by the Japanese during World War II to work in the coal mines.

The 400, 000 Japanese inhabitants of Sakhalin ( including all indigenous Ainu ) were deported following the conquest of the southern portion of the island by the Soviet Union in 1945 at the end of World War II.

Nearly all the cargo arriving for Sakhalin ( and the Kuril Islands ) is delivered by cargo boats, or by ferries, in railway wagons, through the SSC train ferry from the mainland port of Vanino to Kholmsk.

Also, there are plans to add flights to Sakhalin in the near future to meet the demands of U. S. oil companies.

Ethnic Ainu living in Sakhalin Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai are not organized politically.

According to the administrative structure, the Evenks live, from west to east, in Tyumen and Tomsk Oblasts, Krasnoyarsk Krai with Evenk Autonomous Okrug, Irkutsk, Chita, and Amur Oblasts, the Buryat and the Sakha Republics, Khabarovsk Krai, and Sakhalin Oblast.

Since 1973, a rail ferry operates across the strait, connecting the port of Vanino, Khabarovsk Krai on the mainland with Kholmsk on Sakhalin Island.

Komsomolsk-on-Amur is the iron and steel center of the Far East ; a pipeline from northern Sakhalin supplies the petroleum-refining industry in the city of Khabarovsk.

In 2000, Russia's federal subjects were grouped into larger federal districts, and the Far Eastern Federal District was created, comprising Amur Oblast, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kamchatka Oblast with Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Sakha ( Yakutia ) Republic, and Sakhalin Oblast.

: Senecio vulgaris is considered to be native to Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Georgia, Republic of Adygea, Karachay – Cherkess Republic, Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, Republic of North Ossetia – Alania, Republic of Ingushetia, Chechen Republic, Republic of Dagestan, Amur Oblast, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kamchatka Oblast, Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Sakha ( Yakutia ) Republic, Sakhalin Oblast, South Korea, North Korea, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russian Central Federal District, Russian Southern Federal District, Ukraine, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, France and Portugal.

:: Russian Far East: Amur Oblast, Kamchatka Peninsula, Khabarovsk Krai, Kuril Islands, Magadan Oblast, Primorsky Krai, Sakhalin

: The Far East Branch includes the Primorsky Scientific Center in Vladivostok, the Amur Scientific Center in Blagoveschensk, the Khabarovsk Scientific Center, the Sakhalin Scientific Center in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the Kamchatka Scientific Center in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the North-Eastern Scientific Center in Magadan.

The Nivkh ( also Nivkhs, Nivkhi, or Gilyak ; ethnonym: Nivxi ; language, нивхгу-Nivxgu ) are an indigenous ethnic group inhabiting the northern half of Sakhalin Island and the region of the Amur River estuary in Russia's Khabarovsk Krai.

It nests in eastern Russia, in Khabarovsk, Primorskiy, Amur, Chita, Buryatia, Irkutsk, Tuva, eastern Krasnoyarsk, south central Sakha Sakhalin, extreme northeastern North Korea and northern China, in northeastern Inner Mongolia, and northern Heilongjiang, and in northern Japan, Hokkaidō, Aomori, and the Kuril Islands.

Chum are found around the north Pacific, in the waters of Korea, Japan, and the Okhotsk and Bering seas ( Kamchatka, Chukotka, Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Krai, Primorsky Krai ), British Columbia in Canada, and from Alaska to California in the United States.