Food

The number of northern fur seals in the Bering Sea has dropped by around 70% since the 1970s.

The salmon runs are central to people’s lives in many ways. The economy has developed around the commercial fishery, and fish also provide food for the winter.

It’s the right time for either planting fast-growing lettuce and radishes or slower-growing swiss chard and mustard greens.

Subsistence users across the region are feeling the impacts of the die-off.

For Yukon River families, chum is particularly important. Chinook salmon have been low for decades, but chum were the fish they could depend on.

The fair averages 300,000 visitors each year, according to CEO Jerome Hertel. That’s about 40% of the state’s population — more than turn out to vote some years.

A COVID-19 outbreak at a warehouse in Centralia, Washington has led to shipping delays at grocery stores throughout Southeast Alaska.

Seal meat makes up a good portion of what’s in subsistence hunters’ freezers in Kotzebue. But the sea ice the seals haul out on is diminishing, and new research shows that’s shortening the window to hunt seals.

Joe Orsi recommends carefully digging the garlic plants out from below, washing the bulbs, and peeling off some of the wrappers before hanging them to dry.

With salmon runs low and commercial fishing closed, the Yukon River’s only fish processor is offering few jobs this summer.