20.5 C
New York
Friday, October 11, 2024

Count salmon. Get paid. Expect grizzlies – Boston Herald

Scott Greenberger | Stateline.org (TNS)

HAINES, Alaska — In the middle of the fast-flowing Chilkoot River, an Alaska state employee sits on a small perch over a narrow, fence-like structure and stares down into the rush of water.

Eagles look on from the trees overhead as the river thunders around boulders nearby. The worker’s back is turned to a female grizzly bear creeping up just a few dozen feet away.

The bear cautiously wades upstream toward the man, then sidles close to a low metal railing stretching across the river, the only structure separating the two. Suddenly, the worker springs up, turns around and strides toward the bear, shouting and stomping on the metal platform. The bear stops and stares. After more yelling, the employee raises an air horn and hits the grizzly with a deep blast of noise. She turns, slips into the current and floats back downstream.

The employee returns to work.

This is a typical day on a salmon weir in southeast Alaska. Weirs, common in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, are man-made fences that span a stream and force migrating salmon to pass through a single opening, where technicians stand watch for weeks or months and count the returning fish. Weirs are an essential tool for getting accurate counts of the state’s critical salmon runs.

They can also create prime fishing grounds for bears.

The technicians who operate them often count thousands of fish per day, while also fending off grizzlies and black bears who get too close.

“It takes a unique kind of person,” said Shelby Flemming, a Haines-based salmon research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “There’s a calmness and meditative aspect, and also the aspect of knowing bear behavior and bear hazing.”

A grizzly bear clutches her half-eaten salmon caught below the weir in the Chilkoot River in Haines, Alaska. (Alex Brown/Stateline/TNS)
A grizzly bear clutches her half-eaten salmon caught below the weir in the Chilkoot River in Haines, Alaska. (Alex Brown/Stateline/TNS)

The fish’s annual migrations from the ocean back to their freshwater spawning grounds, known as salmon runs, sustain a multibillion dollar commercial fishing industry in Alaska that employs thousands of workers in boats and processing centers. They’re also critical for the many residents who rely on wild foods for subsistence and for Alaska Natives who retain cultural and spiritual connections to the salmon.

“We’re all dependent on salmon,” said Justin Priest, the wildlife agency’s Southeast Alaska salmon research lead. “Whether it’s economically, subsistence or culturally, we’re a salmon people.”

But salmon runs are unpredictable and threatened by climate change, ocean conditions and overfishing. Managing the fisheries sustainably depends on accurate, real-time data. When salmon counts are low, the state might shut down or limit fishing to allow enough salmon to reach their spawning grounds and reproduce. When returns are bountiful, they can allow for a larger harvest.

In many watersheds, those decisions depend on the seasonal weir technicians who spend long days in the middle of rivers and creeks. Wildlife officials sometimes use aerial surveys or sonar scans to get an idea of salmon returns, but nothing comes close to the precise data provided by human eyes watching from a weir.

Technicians count each fish that passes through, categorizing them by species. They also periodically scoop up individual salmon with a net, noting weight, length and sex, and taking a scale sample that can determine age.

“There’s so many [weir] crews across the state getting mobilized between April and July, it feels like an army at times,” Priest said. “We depend on the technicians. They’re incredible people — brand-new folks who are 18 years old to technicians who have made a lifetime out of working seasonal positions.”

Weirs have been around for thousands of years. Many Indigenous groups used systems of stakes or poles to guide fish into traps where they could be harvested.

“Weirs were a tool of governance, an assertion of that village to manage that river,” said Will Atlas, senior salmon watershed scientist with the Wild Salmon Center, a group that works to protect rivers in the North Pacific region. “They inform decision making in major ways around fishery management.”

Source link

Related Articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Stay Connected

0FansLike
0FollowersFollow
0SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles