(soft melody) - [Narrator] On the edge of Alaska, where the Pacific Ocean
clashes with rugged mountains, stands one of America's
most unique public lands. To the naked eye, it's a landscape dominated
by towering trees and water, but deep in the forest under the shade of ancient spruce and hemlocks and in the gravels of
crystal clear rivers, a miracle is born. One that has sustained
life here for millennia and continues to today. - It's amazing for me to think about all the way from that egg
that's deposited in the river, what an impact salmon have on the livelihoods of so many people across not only southeast
Alaska, but the entire world. - [Narrator] Join us as we follow salmon on their epic annual journey from the ocean back to
the streams of the forest. Revealing along the way what ultimately makes this public land one of our greatest national treasures. (birds chirping) This is the Tongass National
Forest of southeast Alaska. It's the largest national
forest in America and together with its
sister forest, the Chugach, they make up the most expansive intact temperate rainforest on earth. It's now July and
anticipation is in the air. Animals from all over the forest are beginning to congregate
along the streams. This mother bear and her
cubs are the newest arrivals. They've traveled here
from their winter den in the high country eager for the annual return of salmon. The streams are quiet, but mom knows that's about to change. (water splashing) This is the start of one of
earth's greatest migrations. After years feeding out on the open ocean, Pacific salmon are finally heading home to streams in the forest. King, Sockeye, Coho, Pink, and
Chum salmon all thrive here and together make schools
numbering in the millions. Life here in the Tongass National Forest depends on Salmon for survival and as they make their way
into the coastal waters, they're met with the first people who engage with their journey. - My name's Karl Jordan, I
have the fishing vessel Samara. It's a southeast Alaska
power trolling vessel, so I fish commercially for
all five species of salmon. - Moses Johnson, fishing
vessel Cloud Nine, started in the seine skiff when I was 7 and did that for 25 years
and then moved on deck. - [Narrator] Mo and Karl
are among a rare breed of men and women in America who still head out to see
to harvest wild salmon. Their entire year depends on a few months of successful fishing, so when the season starts,
they have no time to waste. - There is some fish in this area we're getting ready to fish. You can see some schools of bait fish which are the smaller kind of clouds, so if we look around and see some whales and seabirds diving on the fish, those are good indications
that the ecosystem's healthy and those are kind of
indicators I look for when I am deciding where to fish. - [Narrator] Over the generations, fishermen here have
mastered distinct strategies for catching each of the
Tongass's five salmon species. Right now, Karl's trolling
for high dollar Coho which have to be caught with
individual hooks and lines. - Trolling is more of an artisan fishery, it's kinda smaller scale. We're harvesting the fish one at a time, so each fish is kinda individually handled for care and quality 'cause it's ultimately gonna end up on somebody's dinner plate. - [Narrator] Karl will have a few weeks to reach his fishing quota, catching on average less than
a hundred salmon per day, but Mo's going after much bigger numbers and doesn't have the same luxury of time. - There's a lot riding on every opening. You get to fish basically
15 hours at a time, compared to other fisheries, where you've got room for error. You make the wrong choice, you could make it up some other time, but seining is a lot different. - [Narrator] Seining
allows fishermen like Mo to catch huge schools of pink salmon. They're the most abundant salmon on earth and in southeast Alaska, the national forest here
produces 95% of the catch. Over the decades, Mo's learned how to spot
pinks in the open ocean, but he can't miss a step
if he wants to hit it big. - You have to have a small
skiff on one end of the net and a large boat on the other
end and circle the salmon, bring both ends of the net together. Hopefully there's a bunch of them. (mechanical whirring) - [Narrator] This haul has over
2,000 pounds of wild salmon and is a glimpse at why the Tongass is such a national treasure. It's a public resource
that provides healthy food for people around the world and allows fishermen like
Mo and Karl to thrive. - A large set seining would
be, depending upon the price, some years is thousands
and thousands of dollars. Some years you can make
your season on one day. - When I harvest a lot
of fish, it's a pay day, this is how I bought my first house, this is how we pay for a vehicle. It's very important
for not only my family, but also the other businesses. It's a big business in Alaska, but it's not one big business, it's thousands of little businesses that all add up to a really big industry. - [Narrator] The Tongass National Forest produces 25% of all wild caught salmon in the northeast Pacific, that's nearly 50 million salmon each year. It's an industry that generates over a billion dollars for the economy and employs one in 10
people in southeast Alaska, but as anyone who's ever
visited here can tell you, this is just the beginning of salmon's impact along
their journey home. - Well, you come up here, it's so very different than the lower 48. You go on these adventures and you'll see this incredible
landscape around here and seascapes, ocean-scapes, and maybe, hopefully, you'll
see the big web of life that salmon fit into. - [Narrator] The Tongass National Forest is home to over a hundred
species of animals that depend directly
on salmon for survival offering visitors a glimpse of some of America's most iconic wildlife. As a result, tourism has flourished
over the last few decades, giving rise to a whole new
set of small businesses. - My name is Ray Troll, I'm an artist. I live in Ketchikan, Alaska. We're right at the border
where all the cruise ships first come into Alaska. We have close to a million people that come through our town
of about 13,000 humans on this side of this mountain. - [Narrator] Ray began his career as a print artist in the early 80s when tourism was only a small
part of the economy here. He knew there was something unique about the salmon culture
that surrounded him and decided to put his skills to use. - Here I was here in this new land and my notebooks were filling
up with fishy drawings and that kind of thing
and I was a printmaker, so I knew how to pull a squeegee and I began to do these t-shirts. - [Narrator] Ray's work comes
in an incredible variety of shapes and colors, but it all draws on a common theme. - Well, Let's Spawn and Humpies from Hell, that was a big one, Time Is Fun When You're Having Flies, Walk Softly and Carry a Big Fish, Sockeyedelic, Spawn of the
Dead, Return of the Sockeye, that's a bunch right there. Puns are dangerous things, lethal. They make people groan and moan and sometimes they'll make them laugh, so that's what I try to do. - [Narrator] A career as a
fish artist might sound funny, but today Ray's gallery
does serious business, selling thousands of shirts
throughout the summer months to visitors from around the world. It's a testament to how central salmon are to southeast Alaska's appeal, but it wasn't always this way. There was a time in the Tongass when businesses like
Ray's didn't even exist, when towns like Ketchikan weren't filled with
tourists, but with loggers. - When I first got here to the Tongass, the timber industries were huge. They thought that the forest here was on a 50-year rotation cycle. Cut 'em down, 50 years later,
you get the same forest again. There were so many clear cuts. - [Narrator] In the early
days of Alaskan statehood, logging played an important role in populating the territory,
but as the decades past and the economics of logging faded, the Tongass became less valued
for the timber it produced than for the ecosystem and
fisheries it sustained. - Now, industrial scale logging has scaled way back and the tourism industry has maybe doubled or tripled in that time and really replaced resource extraction. - Today, tourism employs
20% of the workforce. and generates more financial impact than any other industry in the region. Shifting priorities from timber to salmon has allowed the Tongass to
maximize its public value, ensuring both the ecosystem and the industries that
rely on it can prosper. - You know when you stop
and you think about it, what is pretty cool
about the whole situation is that when the salmon
are actually in the stream and they're doing their
business down there, we simultaneously right up above
them in our little gallery, we're doing business too,
we gotta be doing business because if the salmon aren't running, if that whole system isn't working, we are directly affected,
we won't make a living, so keep on running, little
salmon, keep running. - [Narrator] That's a little easier said than done this year, though. It's now late summer and the past few weeks
have been unusually dry. Low water levels have stranded salmon at the mouth of the river, preventing them from pushing upstream, but giving mom her first
shot at fishing this season. She wades out with her cubs watching closely It's been a year since
she's caught a salmon and her technique's a little rusty. But eventually she lands one. This is the first taste
of salmon for our cubs and the little guy likes it, maybe a bit too much. The Tongass supports some
of the highest densities of brown and black bears on earth, all looking for their share. Fortunately for the salmon, droughts in a temperate rainforest don't tend to last for long. A warm ocean front is moving in. Cooling as it rises up
the coastal mountains. (rain pattering) Rainfall like this is
common in the Tongass, with some parts of the forest receiving more than 200 inches a year... In open country, a downpour
like this might cause a flood, but here, the forest ushers the rain into 15,000 miles of rivers and streams. The critical spawning grounds for salmon. For some, waterfalls
still stand in the way, but others rise above the challenge. At first only a few make it through, but soon the streams rise
and fill to the brim. Offering up yet another
way for people to engage with their journey. - When you show up on a river, and you've never been to Alaska, and all you see is the
entire water surface boiling with fish, people, they can't even
contain themselves. - [Narrator] Tad Kisaka runs
Classic Casting Adventures out of Sitka, Alaska. He brings clients out to
some of the Tongass' wildest and most productive rivers with the goal of providing a
once-in-a-lifetime experience. - I pride myself on the fact that I want people to catch fish. Yeah. Woo! We fish for the five different
Pacific salmon species. We fish the estuaries,
the rivers, the saltwater. Anything that catches fish, we do it. You're gonna go a little deeper and you're gonna go right on
the edge of that, the wade. - [Narrator] Hours away
from the nearest road, surrounded by wildlife, and
often battling the elements, the people who join
Tad here in the Tongass can be in for quite the adventure. - Yeah, nice salmon. - [Narrator] But for
the thousands of anglers who make the trek every year, landing a wild salmon
makes it all worth it. - Everyone that comes to Alaska, they wanna say, "I saw a
salmon, I fished for a salmon," As long as salmon is in
their sentence, they did it. In Alaska. Alaska equals salmon, period. Come on, bruh-bruh. - [Kid] Mommy, and the butterfly. - [Narrator] Salmon are at the center of what makes visiting the Tongass such a sought-after experience
for so many Americans, but for the people like Tad
who call this place home, they're an indispensable
part of everyday life. - Yeah, right there. - Because the Tongass National
Forest has had the foresight to plan for the future, to have salmon as a
resource that is prized and highly valued, Jacob and Lucas will
be able to fish for it, their kids will, their kids will. Yeah, it's a legacy, salmon is a legacy. Dad is fightin' 'em and
you're gonna net 'em. Good job. Yeah, yeah, net job, dog. - Dad, that's a pink! - Nice pink, woo. Good one, Jakey. Can you tell him thank you? - Thank you, thank you, fish! - Oh, he's not upright,
let's make sure he's happy. Oh, goodbye Pinky. - I can see, I can see it still, daddy! - Nice job. Can I get a high five? - [Narrator] Healthy
salmon runs on the Tongass do more than just provide jobs, they ensure the recreation
and subsistence lifestyles unique to this region are protected and continue to thrive. - The salmon are the
lifeblood of this community. That's what we live and die by. My wife and my boys, I mean it's in our... it's in our blood. - [Narrator] For so many
people living in the Tongass, the return of salmon to the streams marks a critical time of each year and that's true for no one more than the Tlingit, Haida,
and Tsimsian peoples. They're the first-known
inhabitants of this region and their connection to salmon runs deep. - My name is Joel Jackson
and I'm from Kake. Our Tlingit people have lived
here in time immemorial. If you look at historically
where all the villages were, they were situated around the salmon, it's our way of life. It sustained us for thousands of years. - [Narrator] Long before the Tongass was a National Forest, the Tlingit people thrived
on the abundance of salmon and other resources
provided by this landscape, developing a rich language, stunning art, and a vibrant culture, but over the past two hundred years, colonization and encroachment have challenged the Tlingit people, pushing the native
language to near extinction and threatening their way of life. - We started the youth
elder camp years ago. We had a series of 15
suicides, all from alcohol, so some of the community
members got together. We come to the realization
that we have to help ourselves. - [Narrator] For many here, this is the most important time of year, the arrival of salmon
means food on the table, but more importantly a chance at renewal, a way for village elders, young
adults, and children alike to come together as a people
and celebrate their traditions. (speaking in Alaska Native language) - This is a fish. - [Narrator] The language, of course, we're pushing to bring back, but at the same time we want to teach 'em how we take care of our
food and how important it is to respect our traditions and our culture. Okay, what I'll be doing is what they call newspaper-style dryfish. That's a fully dried sockeye. I learned it from my father years ago. I think it's a very
important to pass it on. I think if you don't know
how things were done, you're missing out on a
big part of our history, of how our people did things. - [Narrator] For nearly 30
years, the Tlingit people of Kake have gathered during the salmon run for culture camps like this one, sharing and strengthening their
community through education. Healthy salmon runs on the Tongass have always played an important role for the people in the region, but are now more vital than ever, ensuring the preservation
of native identities and the continuation of
their unique way of life. It's late August and salmon have finally
returned home to the forest. Millions have run the gauntlet
to reach the same stream and often the exact spot
where they were born. but they're not the same as
when they started the journey. Freshwater has transformed
their silver bodies and activated their
instincts for spawning. Males and females pair up. And the streams begin to
fill with signs of new life. A single salmon can lay over 2000 eggs, but the journey takes its toll. All Pacific salmon die after spawning, but their bodies are filled with nutrients from the open ocean and as they're dragged
from the streams by bears, eagles, and ravens, they
fertilize the trees. It's the final gift of
their great migration, one that connects salmon with the forest and in return provides
the clean water, shade, and habitat for their young, This cycle makes the Tongass one of America's most valuable
tracts of public lands and the Forest Services isn't
taking that for granted. - So, when I think about walking through the perfect salmon stream,
I think of big trees. I think of some of those
trees being down in the river, it's a crazy, complex environment and it's alive with fish. - [Narrator] Sheila Jacobson
is a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service. - And that is 1.6. - [Narrator] Along with
hydrologist KK Prussian, she studies salmon year round to understand how a healthy forest can keep this resource thriving. - Coho 53. For us, it's so important to understand what salmon need in the stream system and therefore, we need to get
out there and look at that. - [Narrator] Sheila and KK's teams travel across the Tongass monitoring both healthy streams and streams impacted by
past logging activities. Most are topside surveys, but sometimes getting the full
picture requires diving in. - So, as you're snorkeling
through the stream, every area in that
stream is being utilized you're gonna see all of
these juvenile salmon. It's just an incredible
diverse environment. - [Narrator] Fish counts
and stream surveys have helped the Forest Service create some of the best protections
for salmon on earth and breakthroughs in this research have even helped them mend
streams damaged in the past. - 94% of the streams and
rivers on the Tongass are completely intact and it's that last 6% that we're focusing our restoration actions on and correcting some of those
past management impacts. - [Narrator] These activities
help keep the Tongass as a top producer of salmon today, but with climate change and other global impacts on the horizon, their work is more important than ever, ensuring the people and wildlife
who depend on salmon today can continue to for generations to come. - Wow, there's trees in all directions. It is pretty amazing, this guy, that's this big and it spends a little bit
of its life in the stream, leaves, goes a long ways away, comes back to the exact same stream, and in that process provides
food for so many Alaskans, jobs, is a huge part
of our tourism industry and really does a lot to the
people in southeast Alaska. - The Tongass is a very
special place for salmon and as long as the
environment is taken care of, it's gonna keep going on forever and it's important to keep it that way. - For me, conservation
is a way to utilize. We're conserving the resource, so that we can sustainably manage it and continue to harvest off of it. - I don't know, I get to go out and get paid to go fishing with people and show 'em our world, and then I get to come
home and take my boys out. - You see them come in and you see the fish jumping in the bay, it just brings a smile to your face. There's nothing like it in
this world, I don't think. - [Narrator] But the
Tongass isn't ultimately just special to the people who live here. It's a true national treasure, a place whose impact is
felt all over the country and even beyond. - It's crazy to think that
when you go to the store and purchase that piece
of wild Alaskan salmon, it's produced on this forest. - These are public lands, we all depend on it and the
salmon are a huge part of it and it is my responsibility
as well as my coworkers and really all of our responsibility to maintain these conditions through time. - [Narrator] For now, and for the future, the Tongass must remain
the treasure that it is, a haven for salmon and other wildlife, a natural attraction
that draws in millions, a bustling center of commerce, and a place that people of so
many different walks of life can call home.
