Arctic Archipelago Disagreement over the passages' status has raised Canadian concerns about environmental enforcement, national security, and general sovereignty. Hans Island, in the Nares Strait east of Ellesmere Island, is a territory currently contested between Canada and Denmark. The archipelago extends some longitudinally and from the mainland to Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the Beaufort Sea; on the northwest by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland, Baffin Bay and Davis Strait; and on the south by Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other
Shelikof Strait variances of up to 40 feet (12 meters). The strait is named after Grigory Shelikhov (1747–1795), also spelled "Shelikof", the Russian fur trader who founded the first Russian settlement in what is now Alaska at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island in 1784. The United States Navy seaplane tender USS "Shelikof", in commission from 1944 to 1947 and from 1952 to 1954, was named for Shelikof Strait. Shelikof Strait Shelikof Strait () is a strait on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Alaska between the Alaska mainland to the west and Kodiak and Afognak islands to the east.