Friday, June 6, 2008

Waiting for Salmon


Its cold up here. Not cold, cold, but colder than usual. In fact so colder-than-usual that even the local fishery biologist has said that this is unusually cold weather for this time of year. The standard greeting between fishermen and friends is "I've never seen the tundra so brown this time of year" or "I've been coming up here for 20 years and never seen..." We even had a snow flurry one morning this week! What does this all mean?

The salmon will likely be late. The infamous Copper River Salmon, so cherished for their 'unique' flavour haven't turned up yet, at least not in the numbers expected and the salmon down south on the Columbia river only just turned up, weeks late and to the joy of fishermen and fisheries managers alike. Late in Bristol Bay means the boats will remain in dry land for a while yet giving fishermen a few days grace to finalise any last minute repairs or projects on their boats and give me a little extra time to meander round photographing them. Here's a couple of mug shots I took today on my travels. Tomorrow I hope to shoot some women in Naknek who hang nets.






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