Alaska’s herring row
On a drizzly March afternoon in Sitka, Alaska, K’asheechtlaa “Louise” Brady hurries down a wooden ramp to the dock at Fisherman’s Quay, her gray-streaked hair spilling from the hood of her windbreaker. There, two small skiffs sit low in the water, heavy with 10-foot-long hemlock branches jeweled with yellow-white fish eggs. “Oh, they’re so beautiful!” “This is the taste of what it means to be Tlingit.” Jamie Ross stands on the deck of his seiner, F/V Anduril, next to a pile of dead herring, his shaggy white hair and mustache blowing in the wind. Ross, who’s from Homer, Alaska, has fished Sitka herring for 30 years. He’s one of the 47 permit holders, and one of the few who remember when herring fisheries lined the Alaska coast. Photos, >click to read< 13:29
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