A TALE OF TWO SALMON RUNS Editor’s note: Bristol Bay’s sockeye run began breaking records in 2018. That same year, Chignik, which is on the other side of the Alaska Peninsula, failed to meet its minimum escapements for the first time in recent memory. Now, Chignik’s residents and fishermen are working to address and bring attention to these unprecedented declines, and to save their way of life. BY MARY CATHARINE MARTIN
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xel Kopun and George Anderson have fond memories of the Chignik purse seine fishery’s heyday. Once, Kopun was on a boat hauling in a purse seine so full of sockeye salmon that the corks holding the net up started to sink. Fish were jumping out of it. And one of the crew members jumped right into the net seething with salmon to hold up the corks and keep fish in. In 2018, however, Chignik’s fishermen were left with no salmon in their nets or fish in their smokehouses. Chignik has two genetically distinct runs of sockeye: one early, one late. That year, for the first time in elders’ memories, both failed to meet their minimum escapement goals. Local salmon fishermen, both commercial and subsistence, were unable to fish. People in the five villages that make up “the Chigniks” scrambled to respond, creating the Chignik Intertribal Coalition.
Chignik resident Axel Kopun and several family members use a gillnet to catch some subsistence fish. The region’s salmon runs are struggling to meet escapement goals. “Salmon puts a roof over our head,” the fisherman said, reflecting on the concerns about the fishing industry in his area. (AXEL KOPUN) aksportingjournal.com | APRIL 2022
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