Salvation Fish’ That Sustained Native People Now Needs Saving – National Georgraphic

Traditional fishermen lead the fight to bring back a species that has an outsize role in nature and culture.

July 07, 2015

FISHERY BAY, Canada—It’s nearly midnight, and Oscar Robinson Sr. has been on his feet for hours, stitching a torn fishing net by the light of a naked bulb. At sundown, two Steller sea lions—one of them a bull, which typically weighs over a ton—punched straight through the mesh and popped up behind the fishing crew’s aluminum punt with a bad-tempered gasp.

Now Robinson must mend the net—”the bag,” as he calls it—in time to fish the next outflowing tide, which turns at 4:30 a.m.

He works patiently: If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Today it was sea lions, tomorrow it might be the current’s raw power snapping the net anchor poles or a grizzly bear stalking the camp.

Read More: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150707-salvation-fish-canada-first-nations-animals-conservation-world/