Alaska's Fish Fixation: Investing in the Wild

As these smolt grow they will head to the mouth of the Russian river in Alaska allowing their bodies to adjust to salt water. They will spend their adult lives feeding in the open ocean before returning to the Russian river as spawning adults to breed and die.

Kevin Wittle from North Dakota skins his first catch of the day. He has been coming to Alaska to fish for the last five summers. For sport fishermen like Kevin Alaska offers the ultimate fishing experience.

All manner of life thrives on salmon. This Herring gull, Larus argentatus, feasts on the leftovers of another’s kill. Over forty different terrestrial species feed on the returning salmon in southern Alaska alone.

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A sports fisherman casts his line in hopes for the highly sought after Salmon. Tourist revenue helps support the towns and villages surrounding popular fishing rivers. With the tourists comes the added pressure of how to maintain healthy levels of wild salmon.

Thom from Alaskan’s Department of Fish and Game nets a Sockeye, Oncorhynchus nerka, which is a spawning adult. The department collects data on the salmon’s age, sex, and length as they enter one of the Russian river’s lakes to spawn. This data is essential knowledge to maintain healthy numbers of salmon.

A discarded fishing boat decays by the side of the road in Homer, AK. Alaskan’s have taken a stand for their culture of wild salmon outlawing farmed salmon in the state.

A mother brown bear, Ursus arctos, and her two cubs gain up to 60% of the fat stores needed to survive hibernation throughout the long Alaskan winters by eating spawning salmon. Without the salmon many of them would starve during winter.

A harbor seal, Phoca vitulina, rest on sea ice close to Seward, AK. Her diet includes all the same fish we humans love to eat.

Understanding how important juvenile salmon habitat to the future generations of returning adults, ADF&G has rebuilt fish habitats along many rivers. Planting native plants and sinking trunks of trees builds a root system for juveniles to hide under and shield them from predators until they are large enough to get out to the open ocean.

A Sockeye is held safely while workers from Alaskan’s Department of Fish collect data on her health. Through years of data collection the department is able to make predications on when and how many salmon will return to the area. This allows the state to open and close commercial and recreational fishing based on understanding of what the wild salmon need to create the new generation.

A Bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, feasts on a strip of salmon from a carcass left by a larger predator. Birds of prey are only one of the many species who benefit from the returning salmon, without which both animals and humans alike would suffer.

Halibut, Hippoglossus stenolepis, hang after a successful days’ fishing in the fishing town of Ninilchik. A subsistence lifestyle is still the norm for many of Alaskan’s residents. Their conservation effects are not just for the good of the ocean but for the good of Alaska’s residents.