Setnetters in Yakutat Bay
From Lituya to Yakutat Bay is almost 100 miles of open coastline lacking bays or inlets suitable for shelter or anchoring vessels. Cape Fairweather Bight, a small indentation in the coastline just northwest of Cape Fairweather (which is about 15 miles northwest of Lituya) provides an anchorage in 5 fathoms that is somewhat sheltered from southeast winds but is otherwise exposed.
Vertical relief of the uplands behind the shoreline decreases beyond Cape Fairweather, and beaches are sloping and sandy. Mt. Fairweather at 15,320 feet dominates the skyline when weather allows adequate visibility. The massive Grand Plateau Glacier fills most of the valleys beyond the first row of mountains and pokes icy fingers toward the sea in two locations. West of the Deception Hills the broad Yakutat Forelands spread from the shore toward the increasingly distant mountains and a series of small rivers cut meandering channels through the willow thickets and sandy beaches—the Doame, the East Alsek, the Alsek, the Akwe and Italio, the Dangerous, and finally, just southeast of Yakutat, lies the outlet of the lagoon that is the combined mouth of Ahrnklin and Situk.
Mariners transiting this coast who stay far offshore will see little more than a low sandy beach and ryegrass backed by the Brabazon Range. But near a few of the river mouths radio antennas marking small clusters of setnet fishermen’s cabins may be spotted. Another visible feature is a distinctive sand dune on a hillside back of the Akwe River, known locally as Raven’s Footprint and considered by some Tlingit people to be a sacred site.
In spring and early summer gray whales cruise just outside and occasionally inside the breakers on their migration from Baja California to the Bering Strait, and a few linger to feed on spawning capelin or invertebrates living in the nutrient-rich alluvial fans off river mouths. Harbor seals and Steller sea lions converge in spring to feast on eulachon (“hooligans”) that spawn in some of the rivers, and later to intercept returning salmon. Often brown bears and occasionally wolves appear on the beaches.
It is possible to run close inshore (inside of a half mile from the beach) along this part of the coast in east or southwest weather. Current along the shore is to the northwest except during periods of strong northwest winds, when it temporarily reverses. With a few exceptions most of this stretch is relatively free of submerged rocks and other hazards, but be aware that rivers and stream mouths create shallows some distance out—look for breakers and other signs of shallow water. Cold air coming down the valleys in summer causes frequent fog at some river mouths, making it difficult to see those breakers over the shallows. Some years strings of Dungeness crab pots line the coast just outside the breakers, and set gillnets appear in the ocean off the Situk and other rivers. Look for a pair of marker buoys about 50 yards apart with a string of white corks sitting low in the water between them.
Notes
Glaciers still covered the Yakutat Forelands until a few centuries ago and as they retreated and released the ground from their weight, the land began rising, a phenomenon known as isostatic rebound. At many points along this coast the beach has a distinct terraced profile that illustrates rebound surges. In some places different ages of timber—distinguishable by different colors—highlight the terracing. In some places rising land caused rivers to change course. Vegetation has been creeping toward the beach as beaches have risen.
As the forelands continue to uplift, and as storms hammer the exposed landscape, rivers change their courses, river mouths migrate from one location to another, and some streams combine with others or cease to exist altogether. At last check the Doame had become part of the East Alsek and the Akwe and old Italio had joined to form a new Italio, but all that could change. River mouths are narrow and shallow, and concealed where they cut through the dunes. It would require approaching dangerously close to the breakers even to locate most of them from a passing boat. All have shoals or bars off their mouths; none is passable by vessel other than possibly an outboard skiff, only at high tide, and skill combined with local knowledge would be required even for that.
The one major river that crosses the Yakutat Forelands is the Alsek. In earlier times its mouth was wide and deep enough to admit large wooden fish packers and even Coast Guard cutters, but it now has silted and shallowed to the point of being impassible, though its current delivers a stream of sediment that causes breakers to form more than a mile to sea. The 16-mile-wide sand flat inland of the beach is known as Dry Bay, and as recently as the year 1900 it was indeed a partially enclosed bay formed by the delta of the Alsek River. What is now the East River was one of five branches of the delta (the Alsek at one time was known as Five Rivers). But an extreme flooding event decades ago piled so much gravel and debris that it choked off the surface flow, causing the East to take shape from underground water forming springs in the upper part of the old river branch channel. As the land lifted, most of the river channels in Dry Bay went dry except during floods, while the beach extended seaward so that there are now rows of wrack and driftwood as much as a half-mile inland of the current shoreline.
Author Terry Johnson spent three summers during the 1980s setnet fishing for salmon at the mouth of the East Alsek River. In those days the East, less than five miles long and shallow enough to wade, yielded as much as a million pounds of sockeye per season during an extended but tightly managed commercial fishery. Upwards of a hundred fishermen fished short set gillnets from skiffs or from the beach and delivered their catch to military surplus 6X6 trucks that took the fish to a plant next to a gravel airstrip at Dry Bay for processing before flying out on DC-3 cargo planes. However, productivity went into decline as land uplift continued, rendering the potholes at the upper end of the East less suitable for rearing juvenile sockeye. At last report the East was producing so little that virtually all the fishermen had shifted to other systems and the local processor had ceased buying fish there.