In fresh water, spawning king (Chinook) salmon can change to browns, reds or purples. Also look for a hooked upper jaw, the telltale sign of a male Chinook. Courtesy Peter Westley
“Memorial Day weekend has long marked the traditional – and unofficial – opening of the Southcentral salmon fishing season as this is roughly when the first significant numbers of Chinook begin to return to the Kenai, Anchor and Susitna River systems, among others. Runs build in June, peaking in the Kenai River and upper Susitna drainages in early to mid-July.”
— This excerpt from the Alaska Department of Game & Fish website, published only a decade ago in July 2014, now serves as a bittersweet reminder of much better days for the Alaskan Chinook salmon fisheries.
This month marks the 39th anniversary of Les Anderson’s world record king salmon catch on Alaska’s famed Kenai River. On May 17, 1985, Anderson, an auto dealer from nearby Soldotna, hooked the salmon fishing from his boat, then took to shore to land the 97-pound, 4-ounce Kenai king. Though bigger king salmon have reportedly been caught and released by anglers since then, Anderson’s world record stands. It also stands for a magnificent fishery now gone. These days, the fight for kings is to save them.
“We’ve seen a severe decline in the king salmon stocks in the Kenai and in other Alaskan river systems,” says Shannon Martin, Executive Director of the Kenai River Sportfishing Association (KRSA). “We’ve had complete closures to sportfishing for kings on the Kenai and other rivers. On some rivers, only hatchery-raised king salmon may be harvested. These days, I won’t target kings anywhere,” she said.
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Chinook (King) Salmon See Major Declines
Fly fishing the Kenai River is changing dramatically as Chinook numbers decline. Courtesy Berkely Bedell, USFWS
Called kings around the Kenai, the species is commonly called Chinook across its range in the North Pacific. In many locations in Alaska, Chinook’s decline has been so severe in the last 30 years that the wild fishery is in peril. The stocks are diminished by all measures, including the numbers of fish returning to rivers each year, the size of those individual fish, and the seasons to catch them.
“I remember the Kenai,” says Peter Westley, an associate professor in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “You could put your head into the mouth of one of those big fish. People are feeling pretty pessimistic, saddened, depressed, longing for the good old days.
“Across the entire North Pacific region, Chinook are not doing well,” he said. “The story is told river by river, but there are big patterns, and Chinook salmon in lots of places are circling the drain.”
Threats to Chinook
The threats to Chinook are multifold, complex, and many decades in the making — degraded habitat, dams, rising sea temperatures, and increasing predation by protected sea mammals. Add to all that fishing pressure and hatchery-raised salmon that compete with native fish. Westley says, “Unless something fundamentally changes with how we interact with them, the future for Chinook is really grim.
“On some level,” he adds, “there are Chinook, but they’re hatchery fish. The habitat is so messed up that there wouldn’t be Chinook without those hatchery fish. The evidence is saying that the hatchery fish diminish the wild fish though. In places like the Kasilof and Ninilchik, you can fish for hatchery Chinook, but the problem is that no one can distinguish what gets caught.”
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Westley presents a comprehensive vision of the threats facing Chinook when he says, “The ocean has always been dangerous and risky, but in recent years, it has become even more dangerous for fish. The Chinook’s life-history strategy of growing slowly and being in the ocean most of its life isn’t benefitting the species lately.”
The Future of Alaska Fishing
A chinook salmon swims up Ship Creek to spawn. Courtesy Ryan Hagerty, USFWS
Both Westley and Martin suggest that anglers shift their expectations of Alaskan fishing and realize that the kings need help and that there are plenty of other incredible fish to go for across the state and the region.
“We need to do our part to take the pressure off Chinook salmon,” says Westley. “If they want Chinook, people should go to places where the fishing has as little impact as possible on the wild stocks, places like Ship Creek, where it’s all hatchery fish,” he says. “There are also some healthy fisheries for wild sockeye. That’s a different ball game.”
Martin, from KRSA, said she is seeing a change in mentality in many anglers.
“Anglers are looking for other species, trying to protect that run of kings returning from the ocean. At the same time, our organization advocates for fishery managers to implement paired closings with commercial fisheries to include additional restrictions and protections. This would share the burden of conservation amongst all user groups. What matters is to get eggs in the gravel and that’s what we’re looking for.”
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An Uncertain Future
Shannon Martin, with a Yakutat hatchery king salmon, caught in the ocean. Courtesy Shannon Martin
The fight will be long and hard to help protect Chinook, one of the Western World’s totemic sport fish, food fish, and a lynchpin of Alaska’s coastal ecosystem. Only recently, in March, the State of Alaska Board of Fisheries voted to lower the spawning escapement goal for the late-run Kenai River king salmon to support additional commercial fishing opportunities for other salmon, a decision that Martin and the KRSA lamented, painfully. Martin called it a “dark day for conservation in Alaska.” She said, “We’re essentially signing off on the managed decline of a species that has defined our region.”
Anyone who’s ever seen the broad, pink-green back of a Chinook salmon rising in a turquoise-colored, glacial river’s flow, while connected to that fish only by a thin line, knows the fear and the heartache that the fish might just break off and be gone, forever.
The first Jesuit missionaries in Alaska sailed up the Yukon River in 1887. By the turn of the 20th century, the religious order of the Catholic Church had as many as 50 Jesuits in the state.
Now, only two remain. And by the end of June, there will be none.
The Jesuits’ nearly 140 years in the state was honored at an event at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church on June 16. A procession of priests wearing long white gowns with red hems walked down the aisle to open the event. The Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Stephen Maekawa, thumped the ground with a shimmering silver staff known as a clozier as he approached the altar.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, walks toward the altar at the Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
“My brothers and sisters, we gather together to celebrate this wonderful and blessed occasion to acknowledge the love of God and the work of God through the 139 year mission of the Society of Jesus of the Jesuit fathers,” Maekawa said to open the event.
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A traditional Catholic mass followed, with readings in both English and Yup’ik. During the sermon, Maekawa acknowledged the vastness of the Fairbanks diocese, and the tremendous amount of work done by the Jesuits to establish it.
“All of the 46 churches of the Diocese of Fairbanks that we currently have were established by either the Jesuit fathers or by direction of a Jesuit bishop,” Maekawa said. “We have a long history of the Society of Jesus’ presence and ministry here in all of Alaska.”
The Jesuits are an order within the Catholic Church, akin to the Dominicans or Franciscans. They have a reputation for taking on some of the Catholic Church’s most remote assignments.
That missionary spirit brought the Jesuits to the Yukon River in 1887, where they built churches, schools, and ministries. Without their work, Catholicism may not have taken root in huge swaths of Alaska, particularly among Alaska Native communities.
The Immaculate Conception Church in Bethel.
But the Jesuits leave a complicated legacy. Their methods of converting Native people to the religion, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, created generational traumas still felt to this day.
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Fr. Sean Carroll is the provincial of the Jesuits West Province, which oversees Alaska and nine other states.
Fr. Sean Carroll, provincial of the Jesuits West Province, speaks at an event recognizing nearly 140 years of Jesuit service in Alaska.
“Thank you for all that you have taught us about who Jesus is and how to love and serve Him wholeheartedly,” Carroll said. “I also thank you for your patience with us. For there have been times when we have sinned and when we have hurt you.”
Missionaries, including the Jesuits, forcefully converted and assimilated Alaska Native people into Western culture and religion. Students at Jesuit-run boarding schools were forced to abandon their Native languages and physically punished when caught speaking languages other than English. Native dancing and drumming were also banned.
The Jesuits West Province maintains a list of 150 Jesuits with credible claims of sexual abuse against minors or vulnerable adults. A quarter of the accused Jesuits served in Alaska at some point in time.
“I ask for your forgiveness for all that we have done that was not rooted in Christ and love for Him, and for when we did not value your culture nor recognize the presence of God in you,” Carroll said.
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Carroll gave the order to withdraw from the state last spring. A big issue was the recruitment of Jesuits willing to travel and serve in remote villages. He told the congregation that the Jesuits’ work would continue, just without a permanent presence.
Fr. Rich Magner, one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska, attends a ceremony in Bethel.
Fr. Rich Magner is one of the two remaining Jesuit priests in Alaska. His last day serving Chevak, Hooper Bay, and Scammon Bay is June 30.
“We all always knew coming in, or should have known, that we’re not going to be here forever. It’s going to be mission accomplished at some point,” Magner said. “And then we hand it off to the diocese that we’ve helped create, and so that’s a good feeling.”
Magner’s next stop is a Clinical Pastoral Education residency in Tacoma, Washington.
The other remaining priest, Fr. Tom Provinsal, first came to Alaska in 1968 to teach. A fond memory, he said, was meeting Elders that practiced traditional subsistence lifestyles.
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“Some of the grandmothers, their fingers were just all bent with arthritis and stuff like that, you know, their whole lives they’ve been working out in the cold and the wet, doing food, sewing, all that kind of stuff,” Provinsal said. “I’d say I just feel very privileged to have come when I did come and to see that.”
Provinsal returned in 1975 as a priest and has served in the region ever since. After moving away, he plans to take a five month sabbatical. What happens next, he said, is in God’s hands.
Two lines formed in the aisle for communion at the end of the mass. After taking communion, Bethel’s Parish Administrator Susan Murphy gave a final thank you.
“It’s difficult to say goodbye to people who have been a part of our lives for so long,” Murphy said. “We know that you have done what was yours to do, and have taught us to do what is ours to do. We are grateful.”
Jesuit priests form a row along the altar of Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church as members of the congregation lift their arms and pray.
Dominic Hunt, a Yup’ik deacon that flew in from Emmonak for the event, led the congregation through a final prayer.
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“Bless them with your wisdom, that they may be a word of hope, a world in need. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen,” Hunt said.
About 70 people posed for a photo on the altar – priests, deacons, parishioners, Elders and children — many of them smiling, some standing quietly.
The photo doesn’t tell the whole story. But it’s a moment when gratitude, grief, and memory all shared the same room.
Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Steven Maekawa, stands in the middle of a crowd waiting to take a photo at Bethel’s Immaculate Conception Church.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – The Supreme Court of Alaska will be taking up the case of the State of Alaska, Division of Elections v. Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.
The oral arguments will be held Monday at 10 a.m. via Zoom, according to an order and opening notice.
The document also specifies that a decision is expected to be made before noon on Tuesday.
According to documents from the Division of Elections, the state must start printing ballots at noon on the same day.
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This comes after an Anchorage Superior Court Judge ordered Dan J. Sullivan on to the ballot Friday.
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