Sign Two: Seining

What should be on a sign about Seining in Sitka?

Ideas for text:

• How seining works: where fish school up on way to go up rivers

• History: from shore, rowboats, controlled by canneries and salteries; motors in teens, independent fishermen; fishery dominated by Alaska Native fishermen thru 1970s; poor runs, fluctuations of industry, catches and value over time, size of fleet over time

• problem with cannery traps, how statehood issue was abolishing traps;

• Seiners in Sitka now, how many, value, product, how processed and where sold,

• Good clean healthy food

• Seining and Sitka culture: boat building here, the Alaska limit seiner, the shops, how boat building and fishing related to early Alaska Native Brotherhood, how boats used as transportation and for traditional harvesting

• Herring seine fishery, origin, now

• Salmon return to natal river to spawn

• hatcheries and how we are next to a hatchery (SSSC)

• Look for sea lions, and youth with salmon, getting stray salmon in this harbor

Ideas for images:

• Seiner showing how the gear works

• Pink Salmon, Chum Salmon, with Tlingit names, how they live, what they eat, where they spawn

• Historical photo of seiner

• Sea lion