Hundreds of small commercial fishing vessels await daybreak. Crews get a few hours sleep whilst the salmon escape upriver to spawn before the start of the fishing ‘opening’ on 4 July
Last updated: 29 october, 2010 - 07:49 GMT
The Battle of King Salmon
The wild salmon run in Alaska is the biggest of its kind.
Each year over 40 million fish leave the Pacific Ocean and fight their way up to the headwaters of mighty river systems where they mate, spawn and die.
The young salmon make their way out to sea again and, year after year, as the fish swim back to their birthplace, fishermen are there waiting for them.
For this two-part documentary, the BBC's Nick Rankin reports from Alaska during the wild salmon run and joins commercial and subsistence fishermen who live off this natural resource.
Part one
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They are part of the world’s last great combat fishery, in Bristol Bay, where crews fight it out in a restricted area for the biggest wild salmon catches -
Subsistence fishing is also crucial to local Alaskans. Bobby Andrew is a Yupik Eskimo seeking salmon -
Presenter Nick Rankin has a bowl of porridge before the nets have to be hauled in. When the salmon run reaches its peak, crews can be fishing 10 or 12 hours without a break -
The gill nets spread out on the river as the salmon splash into the sides and get caught. The skipper Everett Thompson has to both manoeuvre the boat and assist with the catch. -
Crewman Dan Ondersma quickly picks fish from the nets. He’ll get a percentage of every pound of fish caught. The crew will spend a month at sea during the salmon run. -
Bobby Andrew single-handedly lays and pulls in his net. He also can only fish during restricted times -
These red or sockeye salmon have had an incredible journey, starting off in mountain streams, growing in lakes and then swimming out to sea to develop -
Commercial fisherman will catch approximately 30 million out of the 40 million fish which make up the run. But still the salmon come back the next year in similar numbers. -
Lakota Thompson, daughter of the captain and youngest crewmember, washes down the catch which will be taken to the canneries for processing and export -
For the subsistence fisherman, processing takes place at home. Every part of the salmon – eggs, heart, meat, head, bones, liver, milk is kept. Only the guts are discarded -
Finally the strips of silver skinned red meat are left to hang in smoke houses where they slowly cure over burning cotton wood. This highly nutritious food is kept for the winter.
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Nick Rankin travels to the Bristol Bay area in Alaska to see how humans are exploiting the greatest wild salmon run on earth.
He joins a commercial fishing boat at the mouth of the Egigik River to find a strictly regulated fishery and hardened crews who fight it out to get the best spots and the biggest catches.
Nick also throws the net out on the Wood River with a native Yupik man whose people have subsistence fished the Alaskan salmon for millennia.
Produced by Neil McCarthy and first broadcast on 29 October, 2010
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