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Every year, in mid-July, large numbers of humans, of both sexes and multiple age classes, congregate at select river mouths in the Upper Cook Inlet, Kenai Peninsula. The species is in pursuit of readily available protein in the form of hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon. Experts label this annual congregation, the PU Fishery, and it is associated with several other species, including members of the Larus genus (gulls) and Diptera order (flies and mosquitos). Increasingly, this concentration of people represents a seasonal migration from the Anchorage metro area to the Central Peninsula. Local monitors of human behavior (i.e., newspaper journalists) have suggested the migration represents a doubling of the resident population, and subsidizes the amount of biological waste and other refuse present in local habitats. Resident humans have been observed complaining about displacement on movement corridors and practicing avoidance behavior during peak migration times. Other residents appear to mix readily with immigrant humans, although the extent to which genetic intermixing occurs during this period is currently unknown.

I was honored to spend a fair amount of time with Roger Tory Peterson between 1985 and 1995. He passed away in 1996. This image shows Roger on a private ranch in Kenedy Co., Texas where we were photographing birds in Sept., 1995. This image scanned from a slide.

I was honored to spend a fair amount of time with Roger Tory Peterson between 1985 and 1995. He passed away in 1996. This image shows Roger and Victor Emanuel on May 1, 1985 on a birding trip on the Texas coast. This image scanned from a slide.