Sailing for Salmon

Book excerpt: Bristol Bay in Southwest Alaska is one of the great commercial fisheries on earth. More than half of the world's sockeye salmon return to "The Bay" every year. Sailing for Salmon is a nostalgic look back, through photographs and recollections, on the "sailboat days," a time when these salmon were harvested from sailboats - a time still within living memory. These sailboats, called Bristol Bay double-enders, were well-crafted and beautiful, but obsolete for most of their history. The use of motorized fishing vessels was finally allowed in 1951. The Bristol Bay commercial fishery has changed much since then, but the sailboat remains the iconic image of a fishery born on the wind.