Bristol Bay 2010

It's that time of year again. The salmon are coming. Bright, bold, firm, river- and lake-bound sockeye salmon pushing towards a destination they've seen only once when they were fry. After three or four years of navigating the North Pacific between Alaska and Russia, they enter the Bering Sea and ride the humbling and rumbling thirty-plus foot tidal change into one of the five river systems in the Bristol Bay drainage. They spawn. And then they die.

In their way lie somewhere between 1200 and 1500 32-foot Bristol Bay gillnetters. Rounded-chine wood hulls from the 60s anchor next to chunked-up fiberglass and aluminum boats. A few still lack hydraulics. Most sport the reels, levelwinds, and power rollers to help bring nature's untainted product over the gunwhale. Other boats have twin jet drives with state-of-the-art RSW refrigeration systems, bow thrusters, and plenty of corresponding paperwork inked-red. Gear is being hung, engines and hydraulics are tuned, retorts in the canneries are steaming, cranes are creaking, and keels are getting wet.

It's also my father's 50th year fishing in the waters of the Bering Sea. This season, I want to send the experiences, emotions, struggles, successes (with humility) and breakdowns (I don't believe in jinxing) back to my friends and family in the lower 48 who have spent years hearing through the grapevine and over the delayed phone line about what's going on...up in Bristol Bay.

I may post some pictures, but I want to do my best to express this summer's season through the written word. There's always plenty to write about and consider up here with our simultaneous interactions on business, mechanical, and environmental fronts.

Internet access is sketchy at best. We don't have the web on board (nor would I want it; we only have gillnet web), but I can generally poach a signal from our bunkhouse when there's downtime. It is during these random occasions that I'd love to write about what's happening.

If you follow, you're in for hopefully some good reading. If you don't follow, well...what am I s'posed ta do?