[LINK] National Geographic on the challenges of the eulachon fisheries of British Columbia

[rfmcdonald]

In National Geographic, J. B. MacKinnon reports on the challenges faced by the eulachon fisheries off of the coast of British Columbia. Once a noteworthy resource of the First Nations of the area, the species is now facing threats.

It's nearly midnight, and Oscar Robinson Sr. has been on his feet for hours, stitching a torn fishing net by the light of a naked bulb. At sundown, two Steller sea lions—one of them a bull, which typically weighs over a ton—punched straight through the mesh and popped up behind the fishing crew's aluminum punt with a bad-tempered gasp.

Now Robinson must mend the net—"the bag," as he calls it—in time to fish the next outflowing tide, which turns at 4:30 a.m.

He works patiently: If it isn't one thing, it's another. Today it was sea lions, tomorrow it might be the current's raw power snapping the net anchor poles or a grizzly bear stalking the camp.

This is the last great eulachon fishery on Earth, near the mouth of the Nass River in British Columbia, just at the tip of the Alaska Panhandle. Eulachon are a species of smelt, each fish a bolt of silver-blue not much longer than a ballpoint pen.

[. . .]

Along the river's banks, you can still hear eulachon spoken of as saak, their name in the language of the Nisga'a, one of the indigenous peoples known in Canada as First Nations and in the U.S. as Native Americans.

But the fish are also known as halimotkw, often translated as "savior fish" or "salvation fish." Eulachon return to the rivers here to spawn at the end of the North Pacific winter, when historically food supplies would be running low. In lean years the eulachon's arrival meant the difference between life and death for people up and down the coast.

Today, the fish that used to safeguard native people from starvation is itself in need of a lifeline.