Petersburg

COMMERCIAL GILLNETTER AND MOTHER OF FISHING INDUSTRY WORKERS

I went to a Fish and Game talk a couple years ago that really struck me. It looked at the inside waters of Southeast Alaska as an estuary. The entire area, not just say the mouth of the Stikine which we would all probably easily call an estuary, but the Stikine, all the transboundary rivers and all of our small rivers within the Southeast island system, all contribute fresh water that mix with the salt to create this incredible ecosystem that is considered in entirety an estuary.

Clean water is the heart beat of what Southeast Alaska is all about. To try to put any kind of measure on why clean water is so important is hard to do, except that it is what this community is. It is what has allowed us to stay.