Kamchatka, Russia | Where the Salmon Rule, National Geographic Magazine: Russian Salmon Fishing in Oktyabrski

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A fishing brigade south of the town of Oktyabrski where men make a fish camp out of a beached, ocean-going vessel.  They are not fishing on this day because it allows time for the fish to spawn, and indigenous communities up river in Kamchatka can fish in the area along the Bolshaya River. 

These fishing brigades use tractors to tow one end of a net and then bring it around full circle in the river to capture the fish. A net is  dumped into small boats that have small nets laid in them. A crane picks up the small nets and dumps them into trucks that take the fish to the processing plants in Ust Bolsheretsk. If fishing was allowed every day in the mouths of these rivers just off the Kamchatka shelf, no salmon would get up river to spawn. There are two “passing days” each week when fishing is banned, so these fishermen hang out in their camp and do their laundry. Some fishermen come from as far as Ulan-Ude, which is on the border with Siberia. One of the fishermen in this photo is from PK, two are from Urilutsk, Siberia, and two are from Oktybrski.