Will climate change force this Alaska village to relocate?
Less than a mile out, Matthew Friendly cuts the motor on his 18-foot boat and pokes an oar into the cold murky waters of the Bering Sea. At low tide this is all mud. Now it’s a bay of plenty, and Mr. Friendly, an Alaskan tribal elder, is looking for his share.
The fisherman reels out his buoy-tethered nets until they trace a scimitar on the glistening sea. Then he waits for a splash that might, just might, be the first king salmon of the season. Other boats are also waiting in the bay. “Everyone is trying their luck today,” he says.
From here, Mr. Friendly’s village of Quinhagak (population 729) is a gap-toothed band of colored houses set back from the shore. Three wind turbines spin overhead. No other settlements are visible, only the snowy peaks of the Ahklun mountain range to the south and the Kanektok River estuary where the salmon – also known as chinook – go to spawn. The sun is high overhead. It won’t set until 11 p.m.
Mr. Friendly pulls on his yellow waders and reels in his nets, but the catch is disappointing: several rough-edged flounder and a solitary smelt. He tosses them back into the sea. “There’s not much yet, but by June it will be heavy,” he says, piling up his nets.
Come summer, more fishermen will ply these rich waters on Alaska’s west coast. From the air, this lowland delta, covering an area the size of Nebraska, is a tawny-and-cobalt expanse of tundra and tributaries and lakes, its looping rivers etching a dazzling curlicue.
But the waterways that giveth also taketh. Climate change is causing Quinhagak to lose its land to erosion, to rising seas and restless rivers, and to the thawing of the frozen land on which it sits. Buildings are sinking and cracking. Bogs
