Published:This story was reported as part of a collaboration between the Anchorage Daily News and The Seattle Times, with support from the Pulitzer Center’sPICK CREEK — In mid-July, sockeye poured into this stream, skittering through the shallows balanced on their bellies as their backs thrust out of the water.
The Bristol Bay sockeye spend much of their lives in the Bering Sea, and studies have found that they generally do better in years when water temperatures climb a few degrees Fahrenheit. During the past decade, which has included marine heat waves in 2018 and 2019, sockeye, though smaller in size, stormed Bristol Bay in a series of big runs. This year’s return smashed the previous high set only last year.
They are also grappling with another question in a century of intensifying climate change stoked by human activities that release greenhouse gases: Will it eventually get too warm, and undermine the extraordinary productivity of Bristol Bay sockeye? The pace of this warming could have huge consequences for the world’s largest harvest of wild sockeye, which has emerged as a global model of a sustainable salmon fishery.
This year, the sheer scale of the harvest — unfolding amid the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain disruptions — intensified the seasonal challenges of the annual mobilization. Processors flew in thousands of workers and contracted with an armada of vessels, ranging from World War II-era scows to Bering Sea crab boats, to ferry the fish back to the plants.
The best single haul of his career was on the previous night, when gusty winds prompted some fishermen to set anchor. Fourtner encountered what he described as a “wall of fish” as some 2,000 sockeye hit his net. Fourtner now works as a sales rep for a marine engine manufacturer while fishing summers in Bristol Bay. Last winter he also found time to overhaul his 1991 aluminum fishing boat in his garage. He rechristened it Twin Tuition in hopes it would help pay the college bills for his daughters, now 9 and already eager for their first stint fishing.
The volatile mix of big loads of fish and bouts of rough weather can have grave consequences. This summer, at least four boats were lost — although none, as in some years past, resulted in loss of life.His boat was drifting toward a boundary line, beyond which it would be in an illegal zone and subject to a fine. To speed things up, the crew pulled in the net without first picking out many salmon. This created a big, heavy pile in the stern.
seattletimes pulitzercenter Colonizers ways will fall, Indigenous ways will remain.
Bristol Bay-area residents once held more than twice as many fishing permits as they do now. The shift has had a big economic impact on these rural areas.
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