Gray water, green tundra, the smell of the sea—misty, rainy, green, and cold; the glimmering, wriggling silvery-scaled salmon that quickly fill the nets. This is what comes to mind when Christopher Nicolson thinks back to childhood summers in Alaska, where his parents fished, and where his grandparents fished. He grew up on the boats, dabbled around on the beach as his parents ran the boats, until he joined them when he turned 13.
Nicolson grew up fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where his family has fished for generations. Wild sockeye salmon, specifically, in the largest sustainable wild salmon fishery in the world. The tenacious creatures return to the Bristol Bay watershed’s freshwaters to spawn and die. After hatching in freshwater, the salmon swim out to the sea and once adults, return again.
