The specific timing of deglaciation on Prince of Wales Island is significant for understanding when the island could first have been inhabited by people.

Radiocarbon dates and other evidence suggest that parts of the island’s coast were ice-free by approximately 16,000 years ago, potentially one of the earliest areas of the Alexander Archipelago to become accessible.

The ecological succession that followed deglaciation — the progressive establishment of plant and animal communities on newly ice-free land — took centuries to develop from bare rock to the complex temperate rainforest that now covers the island.

But marine productivity can recover much more quickly than terrestrial ecosystems, because the marine environment was not glaciated in the same way that the land was.