Tag Archives: gear up
Portraits of a fishery: Sitka trollers gear up for an unexpected season
The commercial season for king salmon, or chinook in Southeast Alaska opens on Saturday, July 1. For trollers across the region, it’s the equivalent of New Year’s Day, the beginning of the annual salmon harvest that lasts through next March. For 50 anxiety-filled days this spring, it appeared that this fishery would not happen. On May 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered fishing closed to make more kings available to an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound. On June 21, the US 
Ninth Circuit Court issued a stay of that order, and allowed trollers to fish as usual while the case remains under appeal. Photojournalist Berett Wilber grew up in Sitka deckhanding aboard her family’s troller. She recently returned and spent a couple of afternoons visiting the docks, photographing and talking to trollers as they readied for the opening. Photos, >click to read< 07:40
Cook Inlet fishermen celebrate ‘Return of the Reds’ with hope for 2019
Cook Inlet fishermen are looking forward to their salmon season with high hopes that the sockeye will arrive in better numbers than last year. On June 11, fishermen and processors grilled up some of the first Cook Inlet salmon of the year at the Pacific Star processing plant in Kenai, gathering to build excitement for the coming season. The plant is now receiving salmon from the west side of Cook Inlet, while the fishermen in the drift gillnet and east side set gillnet fleets gear up for their first expected openings in the coming weeks. >click to read<15:24
