Tag Archives: Naknek River
‘A life on the mud’ for setnetter who fishes from Bristol Bay beach
Liz Moore spends most of the year working from her Shoreline, Wash., home office, where she helps evaluate programs run by governments and nonprofits. In the late spring of each year, she returns to this Southwest Alaska community, where she was raised, to pick sockeye out of setnets that stretch from a muddy beach. The shoreline setnet operation she runs includes a half-dozen skiffs and a crew of 10 men and women, some of whom come from as far away as New York. “When we get back to Seattle … it’s a life on pavement,” Moore said. “Here, it’s a life on mud, and I think I’m much more suited for a life on the mud.” >click to read< 15:04
One Alaska Bay Is Booming With Salmon, For Now
Bristol Bay’s sockeye harvest has long made up about half of the global catch of this species, in a seasonal blitz as short as it is enormous: The fishery lasts a mere six weeks. Each summer, 15,000 seafood processors, boat-based fishermen, and setnetters, including families such as the Bandles, gather here to support an industry worth more than $2 billion in 2019. Some fishermen will net enough cash to live on until the fish come back the next year. And this year, Bristol Bay outdid itself,,, But such riches are localized. Outside of Bristol Bay, salmon fisheries are failing, including those on British Columbia’s famed Fraser River, on Alaska’s Chignik and Copper Rivers, and in Cook Inlet. Five hundred miles north of Bristol Bay, Yukon River salmon runs have totally collapsed. >click to read< 12:35 ADFG: Bristol Bay sockeye runs set all-time record – It’s official: Bristol Bay’s 2021 commercial salmon season was the largest on record. >click to read<
