The inner workings of the world’s largest sockeye salmon hatchery

The inner workings of the world’s largest sockeye salmon hatchery EAST FORK OF THE GULKANA RIVER — In late summer, a few months before this mossy valley will feel the sting of 40-below air, bright red salmon dart through a crystal-clear pool amid fragrant green vegetation. The Gulkana Hatchery has a Garden [...]

Salmon are the key to life in Alaska

By Ned Rozell During a good year in Bristol Bay, a surge of more than 100 million pounds of sockeye salmon fights its way upstream, spawns, and dies. In Bristol Bay and elsewhere in Alaska, this incredible pulse of salmon carcasses enriches streams and rivers and makes young salmon hardier. That’s the [...]

Scientists solve mystery of mass coho salmon deaths

Scientists solve mystery of mass coho salmon deaths. The killer? A chemical from car tires When officials in Seattle spent millions of dollars restoring the creeks along Puget Sound — tending to the vegetation, making the stream beds less muddy, building better homes for fish — they were thrilled to see [...]

Yet another reason not to buy farmed (fake) salmon

Yet another reason not to buy farmed (fake) salmon "1,400 times more antibiotics..." "But Nova Austral's pristine image crashed in June with the first reports that it had doctored the number of salmon that had died at its farms" Another farmed salmon company in Chile has been caught lying. Besides the chemicals is has to [...]

Pink salmon — too much of a good thing?

Pink salmon — too much of a good thing? By Ned Rozell Of the five species of salmon that swim Alaska waters, the pink is by far the most plentiful. Some scientists think the fish is an overabundant predator that outcompetes other salmon and some seabirds. In the late 1990s, Japanese researchers noticed an intriguing [...]

Where are the Yukon Chinook Salmon Headed?

Where are the Yukon Chinook Salmon Headed? By Ned Rozell In a packed university conference room, biologist Randy Brown spoke of chinook, the fatty king of far-north salmon. “It's more than just a fish, it’s a culture,” Brown said to the Fairbanks crowd, many of them Alaska Natives. Brown is the lead author on a [...]

Alaska Salmon Complete a 1,000-mile Journey, and Life

Alaska Salmon Complete a 1,000-mile Journey, and Life By Ned Rozell MOUTH OF THE DELTA RIVER — On a morning with biting air in the single digits Fahrenheit, this river smells like sulfur and is splashy and loud. Bald eagles and ravens swoop in the updraft of a nearby rock bluff in what looks like [...]

The most valuable wild salmon fishery in the world could become a mine under Trump

(CNN) This year, 56 million sockeye salmon swam hundreds of miles from the ocean toward the rivers and streams of the Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska. Many that escaped fishermen and bears leapt over waterfalls and used a mysterious combination of the Earth's magnetic field and their own sensory memories to locate the exact [...]