Kamchatka, Russia | Where the Salmon Rule, National Geographic Magazine

This is a story about fish and the social fabric that exists around the last salmon stronghold on the planet. The Kamchatka shelf is the only place where all seven species of Oncorhynchus Salmon can be found.

Kamchatka is a narrow peninsula in the Russian Far East bordered to the east by the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west. Salmon have been protected in Kamchatka by the simple difficulty of getting anywhere near their runs. For 137 species salmon is a main diet staple.

The salmon migration is one of the last great migrations that shapes the food supply and activities of many other species, including humans. Salmon bring marine-derived nutrients from the Kamchatka shelf in the …

Kamchatka, Russia | Where the Salmon Rule, National Geographic Magazine

This is a story about fish and the social fabric that exists around the last salmon stronghold on the planet. The Kamchatka shelf is the only place where all seven species of Oncorhynchus Salmon can be found.

Kamchatka is a narrow peninsula in the Russian Far East bordered to the east by the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west. Salmon have been protected in Kamchatka by the simple difficulty of getting anywhere near their runs. For 137 species salmon is a main diet staple.

The salmon migration is one of the last great migrations that shapes the food supply and activities of many other species, including humans. Salmon bring marine-derived nutrients from the Kamchatka shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk into the eight major river systems that run off the middle range of mountains that divide Kamchatka in half.

When salmon die they fertilize the entire Pacific Rim. Warm waters from volcanic systems within with the coldest sea in the Pacific Rim create an ideal, nutrient-rich environment. And the river systems—some of the last braided streams on Earth that have not yet been constrained by agriculture—are vital habitat for salmon.

The biggest threat to salmon in Russia is poaching. There are four anti-poaching wardens who are responsible for all eight river systems.  Commercial fishing is allowed to take about 40 percent of the salmon run every year; poachers take about the same amount.  This happens because enforcement is basically non-existent. Even in the best place for salmon in the world, not so many get through to spawn. But with a new government in place that is primarily concerned with resource extraction, things are going to get much worse for these people.  Soon, an oil and natural gas pipeline will cut through the marine environment, across the shelf and through many of the salmon rivers in the country. This will destroy river environments and open up access roads for more poaching. The new government in Kamchatka is willing to risk the salmon fisheries, which generate 30 percent of all the fish caught in Russia and 40 percent of the income, for a fraction of the natural gas and oil that exists in plentiful amounts elsewhere in Russia. 

If you fly by MI-8 helicopter to Khailino in the far north you will find indigenous Koryak people and white Russians who came here to get “Northern money” when the Soviet Union wanted to tame these areas that were technically war zones with the United States. Salaries were up to eight times what a similar job would pay in Moscow, so the smart ones figured out how to get all the necessary permits to work in these areas. After the Russian government devalued the ruble, and defaulted on debt, no one in these remote outposts got any salaries. They had to figure out how to make a living off salmon caviar and create fishing brigades and distribution systems in a place that can drop to –40° in the winter.  In a very small community where everyone works hard to merely survive, you have to be kind to each other and work in community.  There is easy mixing between indigenous Koryak and Russians to this day. The state salaries are dribbling in for the Russians now, and the Koryak still fish all summer to have food to last through the harsh winter. Russian and Koryak intermarry and work side by side in the fishing camps. 

These photographs ran in National Geographic Magazine in August 2009. I’ve decided to post these stories with the same content and in the same order as they were shown to the editors – in what we used to call a trayThe “tray” is the major effort behind a story and it gets cut down to only a few photographs that end up in the magazine. 

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The Kamchatka Shelf in Russia is the last safe place for salmon and the only place on Earth with seven species of oncorhynchus (derived from Greek words meaning hook nose). These photographs illustrate a story about fish that were left alone for millions of years but are now threatened.  Along the entire Pacific Rim, salmon production is down to 3 or 4 percent of historic production. Salmon transform from silver missiles in the ocean to brightly colored creatures as they make their way back up their ancestral rivers, and during spawning adult males develop a hooked nose. They stop eating, so it doesn’t matter that their mouths no longer work for food.  The photo in the Ozernaya River, above, shows pink salmon— the most abundant—coming in from the left side of the frame, and sockeye—the most valuable—just below them.
 
A dog watches over as Russian fishermen pull in the nets. There are strict work hours at the mouth of the river to allow that some of the salmon can pass through to Kanchatka’s indigenous camps further upstream. The fish have gone into a dormant state because they have been in the net so long. This was the first great push of salmon—the storm had just passed and the tide was out and the water had cleared enough that all salmon to make a mad dash upriver.
Bears love salmon, but they must compete with 137 species of fish, birds, and mammals that also depend on salmon as a main staple of their diet. These grizzly bears go to the river to gorge on rich protein of salmon for three months.  Though they much on greens and berries, the salmon are their main protein source and gives them enough fat to make it through the winter. 
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the peninsula.
To make this photograph, which was selected as one of the best photographs in National Geographic, I had to be approximately six feet away from bears like this one that was charging into the water to try to catch a fish. The water in Duril Lake is murky, so I had to be close and shot this photograph with a 12mm lens. 
A brown bear, also known as a grizzly, feasts on salmon, a fundamental drama in Kamchatka’s still largely intact ecosystem. So many salmon—pink, chum, sockeye (above), coho, chinook, and masu—flood the waters that typically solitary brown bears crowd together to feed at Kuril Lake. Bears need to eat about 40 fish a day to put on weight to make it through the winter.
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the Russian peninsula.
Brown bears fish for salmon in one of the best spots where the Ozernaya River flows into Kurilskoe Lake.  An abundant food supply attracts the bears, also known as grizzlies, to the protected watersheds of Kamchatka’s Kurilskoe Lake Preserve,  the gem of the Russian preserve system. 
Grizzlies fish for salmon in one of the best spots where the Ozernaya River flows into Kurilskoe Lake.  Brown bears are not pack animals and an abundant food supply attracts them to the same place to hunt. The Kurilskoe Preserve is the model for poaching enforcement in all of Kamchatka. It is the only way to protect the last wild place that produces all seven species of salmon.
 
The last thing many migrating salmon see is this: the claws of a massive paw. Brown bears stun their targets with clublike blows, then gobble up their catch. This is an underwater shot of a brown bear also known as a Grizzly in Kurilskoe Lake Preserve, a World Heritage Site, is isolated. One must charter an MI-8 helicopter for a two-hour ride each way, so there aren’t many people to bother these bears. Once they memorize your scent they can come very close and at times I saw 17 bears in the view shed.
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the Russian peninsula.
The Kurilskoe Lake preserve is the gem of the Russian preserve system. These soaring birds of prey are called Stellar sea eagles in the U.S. and white-shouldered eagles in Russia, also nicknamed “parrots.” They are one of the 137 species that depend solely on salmon for protein. Salmon carcasses frozen near the surface of very shallow streams make frozen “TV dinners” for this and other species.
Kamchatka is a peninsula in far east Russia that is the size of California, but it has only 130 kilometers of roads.  All of these roads are clustered around the capital, Petropavlovsk, about where San Diego would be.  All other travel (keeping with the analogy – in central and northern California) is by plane (few) or MI-8 helicopter or something they call an ATV, but we call a tank. Flying over this big empty landscape, the scene is only wetlands, tundra, braided streams, and meandering unconstrained rivers. Free of roads and dams, this is the perfect environment for salmon swimming upstream to spawn.
Grizzlies or brown bears fish for salmon in one of the best spots where the Ozernaya River flows into Kurilskoe Lake.  Kurilskoe Lake Preserve is the gem of the Russian preserve system and also the place where famed wildlife photographer, Michio Hoshino, was completely eaten by a bear during one of his many expeditions here. The wardens told me the rogue grizzly attacked the helicopter that morning and they warned him to put his tent inside the electrified fence, but he decided not to and now there is a carved stone remembering him at the spot where he pitched his tent. Bears in general, in this place, do not recognize humans as a food source and that may be because there are still very few humans here because transportation is so expensive. To get there you have to charter an MI-8 helicopter from PK. The bears eat all the salmon they want, but this new pilot program that is done differently than all poaching enforcement in Russia keeps the poachers away successfully. The Kurilskoe Preserve is the model for poaching enforcement in all of Kamchatka and the only way to protect the last wild place that produces all seven species of salmon.
 
A brown bear snarls at another while the two were fishing. Brown bears, also known as Grizzlies, hunt for salmon in one of the best spots where the Ozernaya River flows into Kurilskoe Lake.  Kurilskoe Lake Preserve is the gem of the Russian preserve system and also the place where famed wildlife photographer, Michio Hoshino, was completely eaten by a bear during one of his many expeditions here. The wardens told me the rogue grizzly attacked the helicopter that morning and they warned him to put his tent inside the electrified fence, but he decided not to and now there is a carved stone remembering him at the spot where he pitched his tent. Bears in general, in this place, do not recognize humans as a food source and that may be because there are still very few humans here because transportation is so expensive. To get there you have to charter an MI-8 helicopter from PK.
The bears eat all the salmon they want, but this new pilot program that is done differently than all poaching enforcement in Russia keeps the poachers away successfully. The Kurilskoe Preserve is the model for poaching enforcement in all of Kamchatka and the only way to protect the last wild place that produces all seven species of salmon.
Brown bears in Kamchatka can be 7 to 9 feet in length and weigh 700-800 pounds. Species: U. arctic Genus:Ursus  
Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears in the world, with almost 15,000 on the peninsula.
In Kamchatka, much of the anti-poaching warden’s equipment is provided by WWF and other NGOs to keep the Kurilskoe Lake World Heritage Site poacher free, but they do not get money for free weights. So the wardens have strapped together  MI-8 and tank parts to use as weight-training equipment. The “weight bench” is a couple of discarded 50-gallon drums for aviation fuel. This group of wardens was brought in from the Sochi area of Russia (Caucus Mountains) so that they would have no local contacts or ties to poaching brigades and would clean up the area.  Two or three of the wardens are always out on enforcement, packing out for over a month at a time. The official salary for wardens is $200 a month, but the WWF came in and supplemented salaries and bought them the equipment they need to do the job.  
Kurilskoe Preserve is a World Heritage Site and the gem of the Russian Preserve system. Poaching has been wiped out here by tough enforcement. Much of the anti-poaching warden’s equipment is provided by WWF and other NGOs to keep the Kurilskoe Lake World Heritage Site poacher free. This group of wardens was brought in from the Sochi area of Russia (Caucus Mountains) so that they would have no local contacts or ties to poaching brigades and would clean up the area.  Two or three of the wardens are always out on enforcement, packing out for over a month at a time. The official salary for wardens is $200 a month, but the WWF came in and supplemented salaries and bought them the equipment they need to do the job.  
These are tracks in the tundra left by poachers.  The Kamchatka Shelf in Russia is inaccessible.  Flying in and out by MI-8 helicopter is expensive but the fear is that the roads being constructed  for oil and gas pipelines will open these remote areas to more poaching.
A warden shares tea with the poachers in their kitchen tent. There are a lot of unwritten rules. These fish wardens know that it costs $10,000 to get into a poaching camp in Kamchatka, and $10,000 to get back out by helicopter with your catch. The wardens understand that if they destroy fishing gear and caviar production facilities,  they have harmed their neighbors enough. And they also can’t afford $10,000 to get criminals back by helicopter for prosecution.
The poachers know this, and also know not to bring any kind of identity papers with them because it is possible for them to be prosecuted with their passports.  The kitchen survives the burn so men can feed themselves. The poachers go free, but have to sit and wait for their helicopter, empty handed which is why the wardens don’t burn their kitchen or sleeping areas.
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. 
After the official wedding ceremony at the Khailino town hall, the new couple is followed by the wedding party to visit everyone in town who could not get out of their houses to attend the three-day party.  Following Russian traditions, they drink a shot of vodka with each shut-in and share a little food, then go to the next home to visit other Kamchatka neighbors who are too elderly or infirm to participate in the event.
The commercial Fishing Brigade outside of Sobolevo, Russia, fish the Vorovskaya River. It is, ironically, the same river from which they offload supplies for the pipeline that will eventually destroy their salmon runs.  But at the end of the first big push, their nets are so full of salmon that they can’t immediately load them onto the trucks.  So while fish are in the holding pen, the truck driver has time to play with his dog. 
Commercial fishing is allowed 40 to 60 percent of the fish run every year in Kamchatka.  Poaching can take nearly as much, so on a good year only 20 percent of they fish escape to breed again. 
Fish plant worker in Oktyabrski, Kamchatka, the town where Soviets built two of the largest fish plants in Russia.
 
A warden torches a salmon caviar production facility in Kamchatka, Russia. Poachers are not jailed because they pay for helicopters to fly in to pick up salmon and locals depend on them for transportation and such. It is difficult to make it financially without strong alliances to the poachers.
This is a rare raid of a poaching camp in Kamchatka. There are only four legal fish inspectors in this area for eight major river systems. These rivers emanate from the middle range and flow through the wetlands of western Kamchatka and finally out to the Sea of Okhotsk. Fish inspectors rarely make the 70 bust quota they are required to make per season. This bust is nothing compared to the amount of poaching that goes on in this remote region of Russia.
Poaching is the biggest threat to salmon in Russia – enforcement is virtually non-existent. Two poachers stand by watching as anti-poaching wardens in Kamchatka  torch their caviar-processing facility. This is a small camp made for fishing equipment and a small processing area surrounded by barbed wire to keep out the bears.  A multi-trunked tree was cut up to create a stand for caviar screens that are used to break through the connective tissue and separate individual eggs.  But there is only about 200kg of caviar.
An MI-8 can carry two tons of caviar, and most poachers who pay for these expensive rides fill the helicopter.  A flight in runs about $10,000, and the return a month later is the same. The poachers know not to bring identity papers because if they are caught, fish inspectors usually don’t have the ability to take them back for prosecution. But if passports are found, they can be used to prosecute the poachers in absentia. 
In this case, the wardens decide to destroy the caviar and fishing tent areas leaving the sleeping area because the helicopter may not be back for the poachers for some time.  This will cost the poachers around $25,000 US, and having little or no working capital might make it too difficult for them to come back to do this next year. 
Poaching is the biggest threat to salmon in Russia.  An anti-poaching enforcement trip starts in Sobolevo, the salmon poaching epicenter. Men ride around on tanks and in boats attempting to spot places where poachers would put out a net to fish–where they see sediment on the rocks has been washed away and a net has been dragged. These are very subtle clues, it is confirmed when landing on a bank they find spilled caviar. They follow many paths into the woods eventually finding the poacher camp. It is remote enough that the warden’s boat engines were not heard. The patrols are just outside Soboleva in the heart of the most poached area of Kamchatka. Soboleva is on the Sea of Okhotsk, just off the Kamchatka shelf and is only accessible by MI-8 helicopter.
Some years there are huge salmon runs and other years are lean. This year the Russian boats are so loaded with fish that they barely clear the surface of the water. These fishermen are fighting against time while the tide is out. When the ocean tide is high and coming in to the Bolshaya, it pushes their nets closed.
If you watch brown bears long enough, you understand why they need an abundance of salmon to survive.  Each bear can eat as many as 40 salmon a day. If they see ripples in the water they charge in and try to step on a fish—not the most accurate form of fishing— the water churns with salmon for them to catch. Kamchatka has the highest density of brown bears, also known as grizzly bears, in the world. There are almost 15,000 on Russian Kamchatka peninsula.
Ust Bolsheretsk is on the western edge of Kamchatka where salmon enter river systems from the nutrient-rich Sea of Okhotsk. Also called the Kamchatka shelf, it is an area that is accessible by road from PK and it is composed of fish plants and Russian fishing brigades.
The grooms antics amuse the bride during a wedding reception in Khailino in Kamchatka, Russia. It is important to note that some of the theater of this wedding happened because it is Russian tradition. The community has endured great hardship and a people who have adjusted to being really kind to each other to all survive together.
Ust Bolsheretsk is small town built on the fish industry on the west coast of Kamchatka or the mouth of the Bolshaya River. The Russian community was founded solely because of fishing and the population of a little over 2,000 doubles in the summer making it hard to find a place to stay. 
The groom lifts the bride and carries her into the warm glowing heart. They dance a little but have to be careful not to catch the edges of her gown on fire. And then the lights come up and the festivities continue with hands-free-garter-diving in a heart-shaped flaming border of love. It is a tradition in Kamchatka, Russia.
A bridge and groom stand before a heart-shaped candles of live that the community of Khailino made to celebrate their wedding. A rare event in Kamchatka, Russia. It was actually as beautiful and touching a scene as I’ve ever experienced though in the setting of a basketball court in a small town on the same latitude as Siberia.
The Khailino community arranged a heart-shaped ring of candles for the bride and groom during the wedding reception held on the basketball court in Kamchatka, Russia.
Dressed in her finest party dress, a young girl is mesmerized by wedding celebration at a rare event in Kailino in Kamchatka, Russia. 
After about three days of travel in remote Kamchatka, you might come to a place in the north like Khailino where original inhabitants are indigenous. Dogs run wild in the street and this motorcycle is racing to where our helicopter landed to try to get this woman on for medical attention. Northern Kamchatka is a very different place than the one main city in the south.  Here, indigenous Koryak people and Russians came for “Northern money” when the Soviet Union wanted to tame the area. Income paid was eight times more than a similar job in Moscow, so some people figured out how to get all the necessary permits to work in these areas. When default happened, no one in these remote outposts received any salaries at all.  People made a living off salmon caviar and created fishing brigades and distribution systems. Living in a very small community of 700 residents, and the temperatures drop to –40° in the winter, everyone works hard to merely survive and are kind to each other.
A father was out late at his fishing camp to get enough caviar to feed 200 people at his daughter’s wedding. The bride is one quarter indigenous—there is easy mixing between indigenous and white Russians. There has not been a major event in Khailino for three years. This mixed family decided to have a wedding even though the bride is seven months pregnant and common-law marriages are the norm among the indigenous folks up here.  So the entire town glommed on to the idea and prepared for almost a year for this event.  Most of the decorations had to be brought in by MI-8 helicopter.  
Russia wanted to “tame” the salmon zones in Kamchatka, so the smart ones moved to the northern communities that were technically war zones with the United States.  To do so they had to have connections and get permits to move to where they could make eight times what they could in Moscow in government wages. When default happened and all their state-subsidized salaries disappeared, all they were left with was the resource—salmon.
After all the hijinks at the house are over, the bride and groom go to the Khailino town hall for the actual ceremony in Kamchatka.  The groom constantly wiped sweat off his face even though the city hall was not overheated. This photograph is right before the “I do” moment.  The group in the background is getting ready to record their footprints as a married couple for posterity in a Russian tradition.
Khailino in Kamchatka, Russia has not had an event in the last three years. Everyone was too busy trying to survive in the salmon caviar industry. The first event this community could muster was a wedding where the entire community was invited. The bride was seven months pregnant, but she worked doing laundry and ironing for all her brothers and sisters on her wedding day.
Kamchatka has remote village life where during the summer, locals race around in ancient former Soviet motorbikes with sidecars. It is normal to see the family dog tagging along.
Young girls are dressed in their finest for a wedding celebration. Their families are some of the industrious people who came to Kamchatka for “northern money” had to scramble when default happened and they were left with they were forced to survive with no state money.  Highly valued Russian caviar was their only resource between 1995 and 2005. 
An oil and natural gas pipeline cuts through the marine environment, and across the shelf and through many of the salmon rivers in the country. Once completed, this will destroy river environments and open up access roads for more poaching. The new government in Kamchatka is willing to risk the salmon fisheries, which generate 30 percent of all the fish caught in Russia and 40 percent of the income, for a fraction of the natural gas and oil that exists in plentiful amounts elsewhere in Russia. Kamchatka used to be divided into two provinces with two local governments. These were combined recently with the stated objective of resource development. By resources they mean oil and gas drilling on the Kamchatka shelf with a pipeline to the port in PK. The Kamchatka league of independent experts deemed that 70 percent of all rivers crossed by the pipeline are permanently degraded for long-term fish production. 
Fish hang to dry on racks helping indigenous people to make it through the winter. Some on the racks is for dog food.  Koryaks are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
A Koryak man dries fish in his summer camp that will feed his family through the winter. Koryaks are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The koryak are typically split into two groups. The coastal people Nemelan (or Nymylan) meaning ‘village dwellers’ due to their sedentary fishing habits and the inland Koryaks, reindeer herders called Chauchen (or Chauchven) meaning ‘rich in reindeer’ who are more nomadic.
 
Sometimes you get the grizzly, sometimes it gets you . . . This fisherman in the Vyvenka River killed a brown bear because it stole his fish one too many times. Indigenous life in the north of Kamchatka is not for show, and not for tourists. Koryak people spend all summer in their fishing camps storing up enough dried salmon to last through the winter. If a brown bear steals your fish, people up north kill it, which is illegal. It is also illegal to run a motorboat on a salmon spawning river in Russia, but there is no enforcement.  Anatoli Navykha, above, believes if you leave the fish overnight in the river that the meat becomes more tender. Anatoli is one of the few lucky Koryaks to have a state job. He used to be paid 8 times what people were paid in Moscow, but now he is lucky to be at par with Moscow state workers. And Khailino is three times as expensive as Moscow because everything has to come in by MI-8 helicopter at $3,000 an hour.
An aerial photograph of Khailino taken on a ride in a MI-8 helicopter between Tilichiki and Khailino, shows the Vyvenka River linking these two communities.  Flying north in Kamchatka, there are miles and miles of untouched tundra, streams, wetland, and rivers like this meandering, unconstrained river that is a perfect environment for salmon spawning.
Locals dance at the Nebo Night Club in Yelizovo. This club is only possible in Yelizovo, Russia because the owner owns a fish processing plant and enjoys having his own club where young people like to congregate. 
 
Russian women in Petropavlovsk are convinced that if they strap electro-sensors onto their skin that they will lose weight “passively.” They also believe there are positive weight loss can be attained by being wrapped in plastic wrap.
Petropavlovsk surrounds the Avacha Bay Port and nine volcanoes surround Petropavlovsk, a dramatic backdrop for a parking lot in Kamchatka, Russia.
Leopard-skin high-heeled shoes are worn by a bridesmaid  at the port in Petropavlovsk, second largest port in the world. Fish go out and inexpensive Chinese shoes come in. This Russian port has a deep, flat bottom and a well-protected entrance, and is the location of a major submarine base. The port at Petropavlovsk is where 30 percent of all the fish in Russia are shipped out – all production goes down the east side of the Pacific Rim – to Japan, China and South Korea. Even though the port is thriving, Petropavlovsk lost 30 percent of its population in the 90s after default. It is still in slow decline with only 195,000 population. 
The main fish market street in Petropavlovsk sells Pacific Steelhead (on far left), which has been on the Russian Red Book of endangered species since 1983. Even though military, police, and government officials charge through this street all day long, and it is illegal, this endangered salmon is sold with impunity.
Scene-stealing Koryaksky volcano looms over Petropavlovsk, the regional capital of Kamchatka in Russia. Entrepreneurs and bureaucrats execute plans for pipelines, roads and mines-developments that build wealth but endanger salmon runs. Half  (pop.195,000) of all Kamchatkans live in Petropavlovsk, most in former Soviet “block style” housing.
At the top of this photograph made in Russia is the Sea of Okhotsk, and below it the Oblukovina River. They flows past wetlands created by heavy rain on the west side of Kamchatka. Wetlands are the primary sign of a healthy salmon ecosystem and clouds of mosquitoes form where insects are a main food source. Salmon create a mass migration engine that brings marine-derived nutrients into river ecosystems, and the carcasses fertilize the entire Pacific Rim.
Dark storm clouds form over western Kamchatka. The Sea of Okhotsk to the west of Kamchatka is the coldest body of water in the Pacific Rim. Volcanic under currents create nutrient-rich upwellings, and the perfect marine environment for salmon. The western shelf of Kamchatka accounts for 30 percent of production and 40 percent of all income from all the fisheries in Russia. The middle range (above) is a weather maker, keeping the western part of Kamchatka wet with rain and the west coast full of wetlands.  The wetlands have massive insect production, which is the food salmon eat.