Fishing News
Advancing Glacier Threatens an Alaska Fishing Village
AKUTAT, Alaska, June 16 -- Hubbard Glacier, one of the world's largest, is threatening the economic life of this tiny, predominantly Tlingit fishing village on the southeast Alaskan coast.
Within days, the advancing glacier could block the outlet of Russell Fjord, a 30-mile-long habitat of porpoises, seals and salmon at the end of the Situk River.
The glacier has done this before, most recently in 1986, with an ice dam that turned the fjord into a new lake, Russell Lake, swollen with freshwater runoff. It endangered trapped wildlife for months as the level of salt in the water fell, but after several months the ice dam gave way and the glacier retreated.
The fear being voiced now was also voiced then: that if the ice blockage is severe and protracted, the lake may swell and spill its banks, flooding the Situk River and smaller streams east of Yakutat that are vital to the area's commercial and sport fishing industries.
"That would devastate the town," said Mayor Thomas Maloney, a former commercial fisherman.
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