Adobe Web Photo Gallery /1a_aniakarrival

7/17/05

This slide show includes 26 images of our trip to a remote salmon tagging camp on the lower Kuksokwim River in western Alaska and 5 images of paintings I did on location in the area. Our son, Chad is a seasonal employee of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, and we were volunteers for 5 days, cooking and helping tag and record data. Fish and Game builds 3 fishwheels and mans them 24 hours a day at this site, tagging the salmon to assess numbers and their progress upriver during the annual spawn. The run this year was big, so the fishwheels produced a bumper crop to be tagged during each shift, creating quite a challenge for the techs to keep pace with the catch. The other challenge was the remote location and the mosquitoes, which could carry you off if you weren't careful!