July 20, 2026 — Counting salmon in Alaska has been done the same way since the 1950s.
A field biologist climbs a tower, counts the number of fish swimming through the area every 10 minutes on the hour, hops down and into a skiff, moves to the opposite bank, and counts for another 10 minutes. They then spend 40 minutes reporting that data – just to do it all again the next hour.
May 20, 2020 — Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, and antioxidants, sockeye is health food for your heart, brain, eyes, and skin. And given the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s careful management of the fishery, it’s a sustainable resource. In 2018, according to the ADFG, 63 million sockeye returned, and a record 41.9 million of them were netted. Bristol Bay is, by far, the world’s largest sockeye fishery, and the biggest salmon fishery in Alaska. It is a well-tended natural bounty valued at more than $1 billion. Along with the other salmon fisheries in Bristol Bay, it returns an annual $14.7 million to local governments and employs a third of the residents in the largely indigenous communities. Norman Van Vactor, President and CEO of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), estimates that, all totaled, salmon fishing brings up to $200 million into the region each year.
There are many reasons to feel good about eating Bristol Bay sockeye, but this is 2020, a year that has complicated everything in food. While subsistence salmon fishing is essential to the region’s 6,700 residents, the commercial fishery is operated primarily by outsiders. As of now, there are less than 400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across Alaska. But as 13,000 fishermen, processors, and other workers from around the world arrive in May for Bristol Bay’s season, which begins in early June, they bring the danger of spreading the virus to isolated communities with few medical resources.
For the locals of Bristol Bay, the possibility of an outbreak engenders a horrifying dèjá vu. “Our people keep saying that we went through this already,” says Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, a consortium of 15 Yup’ik, Den’ina, and Alutiiq tribes representing 80 percent of the region’s inhabitants. She’s referring to the Spanish flu, which arrived in Bristol Bay in 1919, possibly on a cannery ship, and decimated the native population. “A lot of us are descendents. So for native people, the devastation of a pandemic is not an obscure concept,” she said. “We are the people raised by the orphans who survived.”