Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [34]
I looked down the line of people standing in the river and scanned back across the beach. Everyone was waiting, as in some modern myth in which the prospect of a flood of fish brought every kind of person to this sandy shore that would be—for a day at least—our ark. I was surrounded by people of every race, age, and description. We were only a three-hour drive from Anchorage, where the majority of dipnetters came from, and we were close to a half dozen or so small towns. Here was a diversity of people I’d never seen before in Alaska. There were young urbanites who had come in SUVs, and scruffy types who looked as though this was their first public outing since the same time last summer. There were white, Asian, and black families, and groups of Russian Old Believers, a sect of Russian Orthodox who lived in secluded communities scattered across the region. The women wore long, pastel dresses even on the beach, and the bearded men stood in the water with the high collars of their embroidered shirts sticking up above their waders. There were military families with clean-shaven and close-cropped fathers and people fishing by themselves. There were seniors and kids, wading into the water wearing jeans, and all ages in between.
Dipnetting began here in the early 1980s as a way to encourage people to skim what managers saw as an overabundance of salmon from the rivers. Salmon runs left to their own devices fluctuated naturally, too widely for commercial fishermen, who wanted a reliable harvest. Years when the river was thick with fish would be followed by lulls; a mass of fish hatching in the river might strip it bare of food, meaning fewer smolt made it out to sea where they became adults and got ready to head back upriver. So dipnetting was initiated to cull salmon from the river before they could spawn, thereby thinning what could become an overpopulation of fish. This, managers believed, would help ensure that commercial fishing for these salmon was as productive as possible. In the beginning, dipnetting was only allowed after the commercial boats were assured a full harvest. If there weren’t “extra” fish, no one could dipnet. But over the years, the activity became more popular and gained higher-priority status. These days, people could start dipnetting on July 10 every year, and didn’t need to wait until the commercial boats got their fill. And sometimes, when low salmon returns halted commercial fishing, dipnetters would still be busy pulling fish in from shore.
Although this dipnet fishery was a little more than twenty years old, standing in the edge of the river among the enthusiastic throngs of people, I felt part of an ancient ritual of harvest. And we were, of course, repeating what had been done in these waters for countless years. Dip nets had been around long before people figured out how to make them out of aluminum and spare parts.
Everyone was waiting—for the next fish, for the tide to turn, to reach their catch limit so they could go home. No one knew when the fish would begin to move up the river—or even whether that day they would at all. But people knew enough to stick around until the tide began to retreat, bringing fresh water once again down the river, cuing the salmon to move upstream. As the minutes ebbed with no fish, people dragged their nets out of the water and waited on land. People sat on coolers, went back to their camps and warmed up by the fire, sprawled on tarps to nap, ate fried chicken someone had picked up at a nearby fast-food restaurant. This wasn’t wilderness. We could see fish processing buildings along the bank of the river farther upstream, and commercial fishing boats came up the river, trailing wakes that fanned