Word: salmone
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...half a century, salmon fishing has been Alaska's biggest industry -and when the summer catch falls off, the whole state suffers. This year, the $50 million salmon harvest is the worst since 1899, and the result has been woe ful. With the catch of sockeye reds and humpback pinks running 71% below last year, the state is planning $400,000 in welfare payments for the Indians, Es kimos and Aleuts who do most of the fishing. The Federal Government is con- tributing surplus foods, and free am munition is being doled out so that they can hunt...
...wildlife experts knew as long ago as the winters of 1963 and 1965 that bad times were coming. For one thing, there were disastrous freezes in each of those years; such streams as the Nass and Skeena froze solid. When the spring thaws came, most of the young salmon that survived the ice were swept away with their gravel nurseries...
Another reason for the decline can be traced to the salmon's itinerant habits. Bristol Bay red salmon, the most lucrative catch among Alaska's five main species, roam far afield during their five-year life cycles; for two years after spawning they take off on a 6,000-mile grand circle tour of the north Pacific before they swim back to mate and die in the same streams where they were born. Though international fishing treaties preclude other nations, notably the Japanese, from fishing closer to Alaska than 175° west longitude, the fish themselves cross that...
...Your Boats. Aware that the blight was coming, Alaska's state government limited fishing. The number of legal fishing days was cut this year and 600,000 more salmon than the state had originally planned were thus allowed to escape upstream in the tributaries of Bristol Bay to procreate the catches of future years. Alaskan fishermen, who caught 64 million salmon last year, will take in no more than 24 million in all of 1967. For Bristol Bay fishermen, this means an average income for the season of $1,320, or a meager fifth of what they make...
Fish studies show that salmon catches run in a cycle of three good years and two bad ones. Next year seems likely to be the second bad one in the current go-round. Governor Hickel is considering closing Bristol Bay for the entire summer of 1968 to allow the salmon population to recover. The state is also urging fishermen to put up their boats for the year and find temporary employment elsewhere. Unless they do, Alaska's greatest natural resource may go the same sad way of fur trading and gold prospecting, which dominated the economy before the salmon...