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June 30, 2007
On the Tundra
Here is where we are:
A mere 17 hours after lifting off from DC, we touched down on the gravel runway of Coffee Point, a non-town on the shores of Bristol Bay on the Alaskan Peninsula, just across the water from Egegik, the Eskimo fishing village that is Iggy's namesake. Although Egegik has an airport with a runway large enough to land 747s (for the purpose of sending out enormous quantities of fish), it has only 116 people, 44 households, and 23 families (according to Wikipedia). It is a graveyard of old boats, corrugated tin structures, and a beautiful municipal auditorium (state law dictates that a certain percentage of the profits from all fish caught in the district be spent on civic resources).
Unfortunately, the internet connection up here is unreliable and weak, so although I have been able to send and receive some emails, I have had little luck in accessing Web sites, including the Barnstorming. I'm writing this in hope that I am eventually able to get a signal long enough to post an entry, but I am not optimistic of being able to include any photos. (Apparently, I just found out, I'll be able to include a few.)
We arrived late Monday night. After a three-hour delay in Anchorage, our plane finally landed in King Salmon, where we collected a seemingly cheerful Iggy.
Our worries that the trip might change her in some fundamental way seemed all for naught. In King Salmon we chartered a 5-seat bush plane to take us to Coffee Point. The pilot and one other fisherman sat up front while Robbi, Iggy, and I occupied the bench seat in the back. There are some great photos of Iggy trying to come to terms with riding uncaged in a bush plane, but they will have to wait for another day. The trip across the tundra from King Salmon to Coffee Point takes about 25 minutes. The plane flies low and the passenger is treated to a bird's-eye view of winding streams and shapeless lakes. There is no vegetation other than tundra grass and small, scrubby brushes. The climate is so harsh in the winter that nothing else can grow.
We landed and drove the short distance from the air strip to the family compound in a nearly-dilapidated pickup truck that had been left at the airstrip for our use. Reunited with Bob and Seiko and Roji, we enjoyed a dinner of sockeye and rice and then retired to our 6" x 8" plywood shack behind the main house. The "Detached Palace" as it is lovingly called by the Behrs, will be Robbi's and my sleeping quarters for the next month. There is a sleeping platform with an air mattress, a desk of sorts, and a lofted space for storing our clothes. It is uninsulated, but we sleep beneath piles of sleeping bags, and so we remain relatively cozy in spite of the 40-50 degree nighttime temperatures up here. While in the Detached Palace, Iggy inhabits a cardboard box with two old pillows in the bottom. She seems quite content in the box.
Tuesday was sunny, the first sun the Behrs had seen in about a week, apparently. In general the summer weather up here is in the 50s during the days, and usually it is overcast or raining. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the government entity that monitors the "escapement" or the number of fish that have so far made it up the river to spawn, no fishing was to happen on Tuesday, and so we spent the day getting our fishing gear together (chest-length waders, rubber rain paints, rubber rain jacket, boots, life jacket, nylon gloves, and elbow-length rubber gloves), getting our crew licenses (required for anyone involved in commercial fishing), and visiting friends. Although there are only four full-time residents of Coffee Point, each summer a makeshift and highly eclectic community of people from many walks of life assembles to fish. Many people come from families that have been fishing here for generations, most come from Alaska, Washington, or Oregon, and almost all of them are highly eccentric (ourselves included, of course). And so there were people to catch up with. I haven't been up here in four summers, and so I had to reconnect with people I hadn't seen in a long time.
The fishing so far has been highly disappointing. Although we can generalize a certain window within which the fish are likely to come (roughly mid-June through mid-July), each summer the "run" follows a slightly different calendar and pace. Some summers the fish come early and hit our nets steadily for three weeks, and other summers they arrive late and in an intense burst. The last two summers have followed this latter pattern, and so we fear that the assault will come any day now. Today we caught a mere nine fish, a total of 36 pounds. Robbi wasn't sure, but thinks that today's haul might represent a 32-year Behr family low for a full day of fishing. The funny thing is, we could catch 20,000 pounds tomorrow. It would not be without precedent. We hope it doesn't, but it could. If that many fish are suddenly in the river, we are not only overwhelmed with the task of removing them all from the nets, but the volume of fish all along the beach is so high that the folks who buy the fish (Japanese companies whose crane trucks roll up and down the beach to buy our catch mere minutes after we pull it to the shore) stop buying what we catch. If they stop buying, there is nothing to do but throw the fish (already dead) back into the water. Which is both depressing and incredibly wasteful.
But perhaps it is foolish to talk of catching too many fish on a day in which we have caught only nine. We contemplated doing a "fish dance" tonight, but none of us was quite sure how. Instead we had a tremendous feast of ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, and cranberry sauce. A sort of Thanksgiving on the tundra.
For those of you who wonder how Iggy is faring, she is having the time of her life. Coffee Point is like paradise for dogs. No roads, no fences, lots of things to smell and chase, cool days and nights, lots of dead fish to roll around in. Iggy has behaved well enough so far to be allowed to spend time in the "main house". The Behr compound is made up of a series of buildings all of which they have built themselves (out of salvaged boards and plywood, mostly) over time. In addition to the main house and the Detached Palace, there is an outhouse, the "old house" (basically a garage where the Behrs lived when they started fishing here 32 years ago) and the attached garage, a steam house (basically a small room with a diesel burner that heats water and allows you to take a steam bath), the Kumajo (our Japanese-influenced name for the structure where we hang nets and house the occasional "helper"), Roji's house (quite similar to the Detached Palace except for the fact that it is located on the edge of the bluff and was blown over in a 70mph windstorm over the winter, landing on one of our trucks and suffering a pronounced puncture in the side), which is currently at an alarming angle. I would show you a photo if I could. Since I can't, I will only say that Roji cannot currently spend time in his house and is actively searching for someone with a forklift who can help him set it back on its proper foundation, and a smokehouse (used for creating smoked salmon when we have the time to do so).
I referred earlier to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the "escapement." Basically, the Bristol Bay fishery is one of the few remaining sustainable fisheries in the world. The reason for this is that the state has long exerted careful stewardship over the fishery and has thus avoided depleting it. Each year runs of King, Red, and Silver salmon come through the Bay and up various rivers in search of the lakes and streams in which they originally hatched. The Department of Fish and Game knows approximately how many of each species of fish need to "escape", or make it past all the fishing nets up to the spawning waters, in order for the fishery to maintain itself. For the Red (Sockeye) run, this number is about one million fish. There is an "escapement schedule" which dictates how many fish must have made it up the river by a certain calendar date in order for us to be able to fish. If the target has been reached on a given date, we are allowed to fish. If it has not, we take a day off (like we did on Tuesday). There is a careful balance to strike between letting enough fish up the river and letting too many up. If too many fish "escape" they will lay their eggs on top of one another, causing eggs to die and the fishery to suffer. And so the fishermen have become an integral part in maintaining the health of the fishery. If we were to not fish in a given year, far too many fish would make it up the river and all hell would break loose.
How do they determine how may fish have "escaped" up the river when deciding whether or not we be allowed to fish? The answer is wonderful: a high school student sits in a tower that looks a lot like a lifeguard chair and counts fish as they swim over a white stripe at the bottom of the narrow part of the river. Really. That's all there is to it.
We listen to the radio at scheduled intervals to hear announcements from the Department of Fish and Game as to when we are next permitted to fish. Typically, the "openings" begin in accordance with the tide. Usually we are allowed to put our nets in the water about an hour after the tide starts coming in and are usually allowed to continue fishing for the length of the tide (approximately 8 hours). We are "set net" fishermen, as opposed to "drift" fishermen. This means that we set our nets out from the shore. Each net is 50 fathoms (100 yards ) long, and extends into the water roughly perpendicular to the shore. The net moves back and forth from the shore into the water on a triangular rope system, each corner of which is held by a 10 foot "screw anchor" and a series of pulleys. The opening begins at a precise time (11:30am tomorrow, morning is our next opening, for example), and one of the most important things about what we do is getting the nets into the water as soon as possible after the time of the opening, but not a moment prior. Since there are nets every 100 yards up and down the beach, most of what a fisherman catches during a particular opening is the fish that are currently in the river between his net and the net 100 yards upstream. It is therefore incumbent on a successful fishermen to get his nets wet immediately after the opening. If he is even a few minutes late, he might sacrifice the majority of his catch for the fishing period, as the fish that might otherwise have been his would have already moved upriver to the next net and any other fish would be blocked from entering his net area by the net downstream. Consequently, there is an enormous advantage to setting out one's net even 30 seconds early, and so the practice is not only dishonorable but punishable by steep fines ($5,000 for even a few seconds early if the state troopers catch you).
Perhaps this is enough fishing background for the time being. I wish that I was able to supplement all of these explanations with photos, but I have not yet found a way to do so with the current connection. We are lucky to have internet at all. One of the fishermen who runs a fairly large outfit between our compound and our fishing sites has satellite internet and generously allows others access to his signal. Sitting on a four-wheeler (our primary means of transport up here since there are no real roads) outside his cabin, I am able to raise enough of a signal to send and receive emails. With any luck, I'll be able to post this, too.
More tales to come when the heart of the fishing actually begins. Last year the Behrs went from a similar trickle to a torrent overnight. And so we must be prepared for anything tomorrow.
Feel free to write emails if you're dying for better explanations of any of this fishing stuff, and I'll do my best to post answers. I'm familiar enough with it now that I forget how strange this world is and how much there is to explain.
Please forgive the inevitable errors. No time to check my math. I hope you all are well.
Posted by bogenamp at June 30, 2007 02:32 AM