Rivers of Life:
Southwest Alaska, The Last Great Salmon Fishery
Bruce Hampton
Photography by Robert Glenn Ketchum
The world’s largest population of wild sockeye salmon winds up and down the freshwater rivers and streams of Alaska’s southwest corner, Bristol Bay. That migration forms the heart of the rich ecological and historical narrative Rivers of Life: Southwest Alaska, The Last Great Salmon Fishery (Aperture, $50), a coffee-table volume nearly the size of a coffee table. With an essay by wildlife biologist Bruce Hampton and arresting tableaux from renowned photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum, Rivers of Life paints a picture of a land and a people long intertwined and now mutually threatened by the forces of environmental degradation.
— Louis Bayard
