On the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, on the southern bank of Ozernaya River, at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula lies the southernmost settlement of Kamchatka, the town of Ozernovsky. A town of 2,500 people lives and breathes sockeye salmon. The Ozernaya River has the largest run of sockeye salmon in Asia and the whole economy of this town revolves around it. Without […]
The bobbing of the taxing plane on an uneven tarmac meant I have finally landed in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka. My stop here was only temporary. After a few days of waiting in an old Soviet-built hotel for the weather to clear, I was given the green light. The MI-8 helicopter, the workhorse of the Russian aviation of the Russian Far East, was taking me to Ozernovsky,
In the summer of 2011, I spent over a month on Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. For the most part, I was working as as a fisheries sustainability expert in a fishing town of Ozernovsky, population 2,000. The Ozernaya River, born at Kurilskoe Lake about 40 kilometers inland, and emptying into the Sea of Okhotsk just past the town, has the largest sockeye