A Live Camera Feed of Brooks Falls at Katmai National Park, in Alaska. (Again)

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

The Inlet has been overfished. Look at the relatively few barn doors left to catch in Kachemak. Too many people chasing that "once in a lifetime" halibut that has meat quality of absolute crap and is full of worms, but also which lays millions of eggs every year. Add in the pollack trawlers that make sure McDonald's can sell Fillet O' Fish sandwiches for $4 a piece and still make a profit while tossing mad tonnages of salmon, halibut, and bait fish bycatch carcasses overboard and we have a dying fishery.

Pollution isn't a major issue with the Inlet, honestly. The turbidity is natural and hasn't changed at all, being the result of all the glacial till the inlet sees as the receiving water for multiple glacial and alluvian rivers and streams. I'm sure it was the same a hundred years ago. The rest of the ocean is a different story, sadly.



Did you ever fish herring off the Whittier rock wall? The old timers talk about being able to throw cast nets there and in Seward 25 years ago and come up with several 5 gallon buckets worth on one throw. Now you're lucky to find a bait ball that would be decimated by a single cast net throw right at the height of the season and using Sabiki rigs off the jetty usually yields a bucket's worth on the best day fishing it all day long. Herring are the backbone of the entire predator fish (and bird, and ocean mammal) food chain. If they've been overfished or otherwise compromised, our ocean fisheries are doomed and it's already too late to rescue them.

a reply to: burdman30ott6


My thoughts were on the micro plastics and radiation being puked out by Fukushima into the "open" ocean from where all manners of aquatic creature are returning.

The "sea cities" seen by plane on the surface of the Pacific makes me sick. All those lights are boats indiscriminately catching fish and clearing the sea out. By-catch is the PC term, huh. A waste is what I call it. No respect for life in the form of the critters caught or the critters depending upon the return of "by-catch" to grow and live. Waste creating a wasteland.

Grayling, can't keep rainbows, pike... never really considered trying it, a bit past hooligan fishing (not the best things ever, but you can get your fishing fix, and I was thinking of trying it in a curry instead of fish sauce!), maybe it is time to get a hunting license for the world's "most dangerous animal" and sink a few trawlers in international waters!

Herring. Man. They have now restricted the eggs on kelp for native elders only! I remember trying them in fourth grade. Not bad and to my young pallet better than blubber (which is now also restricted). Maybe that is where my love for tobiko started!! It is more of a texture thing. But even tobiko is not really being found. I only made it down here in 1990 so those are "old timer" stories to me. I wonder what my "old timer" stories will be? Makes me sad.

What the h3ll have we done to our planet??

ETA: @all, Sorry to be Debbie Downer! Which is why I don't hold a grudge against a bear too much when they take a human down.

I've yet to see a salmon make it over the ridge to the upper level.....
I've also yet to see a lot of fish as once....

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
I've yet to see a salmon make it over the ridge to the upper level.....
I've also yet to see a lot of fish as once....

Patience. Patience.