Editor's Note: KEEN has supported Protect Our Winters (POW) since 2023 and recently launched the Whyser POW slip-on shoe that supports climate advocacy – with 1% of proceeds going to POW so they can continue to help passionate outdoor people protect the places and experiences they love from climate change. This winter slip-on features a watercolor print by Max Romey with a little help from Alaskan snowflakes that landed on his painting. How does a changing climate affect life in Alaska? Alex Lee, captain of the Protect Our Winters Science Alliance, is sharing a glimpse of that. And his freezer.
Whyser POW Slip-On Shoe in Alpine Start
A couch-sized chest freezer sits in my Anchorage garage, adorned by all the stickers for outdoor gear brands, air taxi services, and local pizza shops that found no home on water bottles or skis. This coffer of promise, like many in Alaska, ebbs and flows with the seasons. Winter sees scarcity creep in, but summer sees renewal. The freezer holds my food, imagination, favorite places, friends, adventures, hopes, worries, and ethical center.
I am not sure if my freezer has much in the way of emotions, but I imagine even this machine feels the expectation of summer in the North: midnight sun and largess. Rivers move fish from ocean to stream; tour buses move people from cruise ships to hotels; rain, sun, mosquitoes, grizzly bears, and an eagerness to optimize moves everything. Anchorage feels briefly verdant this time of year. Streets are busy, so is the tundra, the forest, and the water. Birds, bugs, berries, everyone, and everything flutters. I spend much of April anxious about the state of my freezer, a common sentiment as last year’s stocks dwindle. Solidly into July at the time I am writing this, my freezer is no less central to my thoughts, but for the time being, anxiety has been supplanted by gratitude, hurry, and an undeniable bit of pride. Pacific cod and halibut restocked white fish supplies in early summer, now my attention is on to red fish.
"One of my greatest worries as the climate changes in Alaska and the North Pacific is the future of our fish. The North Pacific Ocean is warming faster than any other ocean basin on the planet."
Salmon is a communal resource in Alaska.
Commercial fishing is, of course, an economic engine in the state, but our relationship with fish goes much deeper. People will readily leave work, change plans, and organize summer schedules around salmon. At the same time, those fish in the freezer do not ever belong to us; they are borrowed from the water, with a debt taken on in exchange for sustenance. Because of this, it would not make sense to covet, hoard, or cling to frozen salmon. If you are out of fish, your neighbor will give you some. If you hear of someone else out of fish, you will readily offer to give them some. This is an unspoken social contract between each other in the North, as well as between people and the fish that lend their lives for us to use in unimaginably vast numbers. Rural and urban residents alike fill our freezers with these red fish from late May into September (I am calling us Anchorage residents urban here, despite protest from the bear that shit in my yard this week).
The mood of the whole state changes when the fish arrive. My dog is even happier during fish season, for obvious reasons; nothing goes to waste. Perhaps the best part of my past year was watching my two-year-old's eyes light up at the sight of a cooler of salmon and exclaim with perfect enunciation, "Dad catch fish!”
One of my greatest worries as the climate changes in Alaska and the North Pacific is the future of our fish. The North Pacific Ocean is warming faster than any other ocean basin on the planet. Warmer water comes with a lower pH. Even a slight change in acidity decreases the growth rate of juvenile salmon, disrupts salmon’s ability to navigate back to natal streams, and reduces the stability of food sources that salmon rely on. The circumpolar North is also warming more rapidly than any other terrestrial ecosystem in the world. As permafrost thaws, spawning streams warm, and river systems change, salmon runs face increasing uncertainty. In my lifetime, we have seen a steady decline in king salmon stocks, with ever-increasing restrictions on fishing in recent years. This year, Southcentral Alaska also significantly restricted retention of coho salmon. While I hope this is not a sign of things to come – and sockeye salmon runs have been quite strong the last few years – it’s impossible to disentangle a warming ocean, human take, increasingly dynamic pressures, economic necessities, and Alaska’s identity. Salmon runs feel stalwart, but extremely delicate. Their future is our future too.
The apex of the Alaskan fish flurry for many Alaska residents revolves around ‘dipnetting’, a practice of taking a 4’-5’ diameter net on the end of an 8’ aluminum pole and catching sockeye salmon on their way to spawn, either at the mouth of select big rivers or in natural freshwater constrictions where the fish pass by in great density. My wife and I have gone dipnetting for the past several years, usually on the Copper River where her family has gone since her childhood (she grew up in Alaska, while I am an import). We typically ride an ATV down an abandoned railroad grade in the middle of night, to then hike down a steep canyon. The final step of fishing here involves then lowering over cliffs to get to the river, tied off to spruce trees with my old climbing rope so as to not fall to certain death in churning glacial water (Alaskans will all know where I am talking about). The whole enterprise looks (and indeed feels) somewhat precarious but is undeniably effective. When timing for this has not suited our schedule, we’ve chased tides south to the Kenai Peninsula for the much more civilized but crowded scene of beachfront dipnetting, lined up shoulder to shoulder with several hundred others on any given day. Somehow, this too is productive enough to fill the freezer if you catch the right tide. This season we did neither.
I ditched the nets and rods in pursuit of this year’s burgeoning freezer stocks of sockeye, opting instead for a spear, a snorkel, and a bit of breath hold practice. Freediving with a speargun and thick wetsuit provides an unpopular, but addictive, spectral experience, and potent tactic when salmon school. It takes a bit of time to find a steady hand while holding your breath in dark, frigid saltwater, but abundance makes up for difficulty. A healthy amount of gumption in the right place is magic – revealing walls of darting salmon, untouched by freshwater or the imminent deterioration that comes with it.
"Taxes do not exist under water. Even if only for a brief minute, there is no noise, no insurance, and no broken garage door opener."
Runs of these fish gather in the ocean out from the mouths of their natal streams in great densities, swirling in the cold, silty water at the northern edge of the Pacific Ocean. Freediving with these fish is hypnotic. Any urge to breathe or discomfort in diving balances out quickly when uncountably many fish come into view. Then, beneath the water, you get to become a fish hunting fish. I am a Pisces, but only recently learned how to freedive and spearfish. Taxes do not exist under water. Even if only for a brief minute, there is no noise, no insurance, and no broken garage door opener. I can feel my heartbeat, the tide ebb, and the suspicion of the fish I am after. Pun intended, I am hooked.
Across the state, others still drift net, set net, snag, fly fish, spin cast, surf cast, mooch, troll, bait fish, or buy fish from local fishermen over the course of the summer. No matter the method, freezers are filling. Vacuum-sealed bags of filets, zip-locks of salmon collars and bellies, and a few experiments with roe are all again accumulating slightly faster than my grill or pan can handle – the freezer takes care of these fish that take care of us. Any lingering remainder of last year’s effort gets cured and smoked and returned to the freezer, going from the dregs at the bottom, back to the choice favorite on top.
It should come as no surprise that one of my daughter’s first words was 'fish.'
My grandfather taught me to love fish, but love fishing more. I grew up in New England, where he saw the salmon disappear long before my childhood began. I hope my daughter loves fishing, but always loves fish, too. We manage the world as we have received it and pass down the world with our withdrawals outstanding. None of us can ever really repay our debts; instead, we inherit them to the future. People and fish, we need each other.
"If one day my freezer runs empty, it will not be the fishes’ fault."
The gratitude held in my freezer manifests my agency in shaping both my daughter’s expectations for dinner, as well as the prospects and perils of tomorrow. Our ethic shapes our future. If one day my freezer runs empty, it will not be the fishes’ fault.
With stores of salmon topped off and runs slowing down, I’ll keep spearfishing for rockfish until cold weather shifts my attention across the garage to my ski bench. I'll also get out once or twice this fall on the local rivers looking for rainbow trout and dolly varden char, an opportunity before the snow falls to take out my grandfather’s fly rod on the days I’m out of breath. If anything makes it past dinner time, my freezer will be ready.
The freezer holds 21.7 cubic feet of food, and at least as many stories.
· Halibut, another Alaska staple.
· Cod, the best fishing of the year.
· Rockfish, three kinds.
· Hooligan, also known as candle fish (because they were once dried and burned as candles); they are an Alaskan oddity we use for food, dog treats, and halibut bait.
· Shrimp (spot prawns), these came with a ski trip.
· Moose, this one from a hunting trip down the Yukon River that involved boating a couple hundred miles in a 40-year-old, leaking Jon boat that almost sank twice. We saw a mammoth tusk along the way.
· Caribou from a friend, because everyone knows caribou is best when shared.
· Duck, one left.
· Herring eggs.
· Wahoo, the one import, brought home from a midwinter dart for vitamin D in Mexico.
· Blueberries - gotta have something for breakfast.
About the author: Alex Lee is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Institute for Culture and Environment at Alaska Pacific University. Alex works with the non-profit Protect Our Winters as Captain of the Science Alliance; he lives in Anchorage, Alaska. Alex’s work explores environmental problem solving and the nature of moral obligations to the non-human world. He writes about why we should protect nature, politics, skiing, mountains, fish, climate, and sometimes his two-year old daughter.
