We took a little side trip down to Valdez. You know, the town that gained infamy back in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground and dumped 32 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Valdez is where the Trans-Alaska pipeline ends, having piped crude oil 800 miles down from Prudhoe Bay in the north. It’s also a huge fishing port, and we happen to be here the weekend of the Women’s Silver Salmon Derby (no, I’m not planning to enter).
One of the local attractions this time of year is the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery. Salmon are hatched here and fed in pens until the fry are large enough to be released into the Gulf of Alaska. When they are ready to breed thousands and thousands of them return to the hatchery, fighting like crazy to get back in and spawn before they die. A fish weir prevents most of them from going up the natural stream at Solomon Falls, as the natural spawning area isn’t large enough for all of them. Instead, they are guided up a fish ladder to the hatchery pens to be artificially spawned.
Looking out from a bridge over the stream, we could see the horde of fish in the bay fighting to get in past the weir.
The fish ladder is off to one side of the weir; it guides the fish back into the hatchery for spawning.
Hatchery fish are still considered “wild salmon” and not farmed because they spend the majority of their lives in the wild, eating the same food as actual wild salmon. The drawback is that hatchery salmon compete with the true wild salmon for food resources. And because salmon always return to where they were born to spawn they don’t interbreed with wild salmon, either. So there’s a bit of a debate about whether hatcheries are a good or bad thing for the salmon fishery overall.
The huge swarm that spreads out over the bay provides dinner for gulls, sea lions, and humans alike. It was hard not to be jealous of just how easy the fishermen here had it – they were catching them by the bucketload with almost no effort at all!
And of course the sea lions and gulls got to eat pretty well, too.
So we were feeling like we had wasted a bunch of money hiring a guide over in Soldotna when we could’ve just come here to Valdez, thrown a hook in the water and reeled in fish by the bucketload. Granted, these are pinks and not sockeye – but in late August, the hatchery will be swarmed with silvers (also called coho) which are supposed to be just as good to eat as sockeye. Oh well, a lesson learned for next time. Anyway, something we saw along the roadside made us completely forget about it…a black bear catching fish in a small stream. We pulled over and watched in amazement as he greedily consumed fish after fish (at least nine that we saw – we hung around and watched for more than an hour).
One of the trips we’d been on the fence about was going to Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park to watch the bears fishing. If you’ve ever seen photos of a bunch of brown bears fishing side by side, that’s probably where they were taken. But the only way to get there is by plane, and it’s a pricey trip at upwards of $500 per person. So we vetoed the idea and hoped we wouldn’t leave Alaska regretting that decision. And then we happened on this bear, just casually catching salmon by the side of the road. And, at no cost to us! Serendipity.
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