Word: salmons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...still relatively unpolluted; massive garbage disposal in it has been halted. It is still, thanks to its tributaries, a major spawning habitat for Pacific salmon, and its mud flats are a vital source of food to many fish and ocean birds. Its waters provide the Bay Area with a natural year-round air-conditioning system. All this would be destroyed if the bay were diminished. The bay's would-be protectors also point out that the nine surrounding counties encompass more than 7,000 square miles, largely undeveloped, and have no real need to expand inwardly into...
...also caused spectacular kills of fish and wildlife. In the Canadian province of New Brunswick, for example, the application of only one-half pound of DDT per acre of forest to control the spruce budworm has twice wiped out almost an entire year's production of young salmon in the Miramichi River. In this process, rain washes the DDT off the ground and into the plankton of lakes and streams. Fish eat the DDT-tainted plankton; the pesticide becomes concentrated in their bodies, and the original dose ultimately reaches multifold strength in fish-eating birds, which then often...
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...