There's a Forest Service office outside of Valdez, next to a stream that the salmon run up. They have an underwater camera that lets you view the salmon swimming around underwater. It's neat. You can tell we've been here a while now (4 weeks!) because the salmon are dying in droves, while many were just beginning to spawn when we arrived. They swim upstream, mate and make a nest of eggs, and then die. The decaying salmon are an important part of the natural cycle (and they don't smell nearly as bad as you'd expect!). The salmon start to decay while they're still alive, as far as I can tell. Many of the ones that were still swimming around looked mostly dead, with hunks of flesh missing or hanging off. Yum!
The water was barely deep enough for the fish to swim in, but they seemed to manage fine. There's a video here [10MB/38sec].
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