Too many pink salmon in Kachemak Bay?
Tucked into a narrow fjord on the south side of Kachemak Bay is a small lagoon, 700 feet wide, and only a couple thousand feet long. At low tide, a salty trickle connects it to the ocean. At high tide, at the height of the summer, treble hooks fly between a flurry of skiffs as salmon snaggers circle the net pens in the center of the lagoon. Seines scoop up tens of thousands of fish in an attempt to pay for the hatchery, as hatchery operators collect eggs from the fish that swarm the creek. A few weeks later, carcasses rot, eggs incubate and Tutka Lagoon fades back into relative obscurity. Until this year, that is, when a wave of controversy spilled out through that narrow channel like the 100 million pink salmon they hope to release, flooding across Kachemak Bay State Park to Homer, up Cook Inlet, and down to Juneau, prompting the governor to send a fleet of commissioners to brace against the wave. click here to read the story 09:03
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