When Crab Was King: Faces of the Kodiak King Crab Fishery, 1950-1982
KMM is exhibiting a series of twenty-four photographic portraits of fishermen, processing workers, bartenders, store owners and ordinary people who lived through the boom years of the Kodiak King Crab Fishery, which lasted from the 1950s to 1982. Portraits are part of a King Crab exhibit which ran from May 7 to June 1, 2011, at the Baranov Musuem in Kodiak. Read the Curator's Statement below.
Curator’s Statement
As the King Crab boom peaked in the mid 1960s, everyone in Kodiak knew that something extraordinary was happening- there were suddenly thousands of young people in town, new crab boats arrived every week, and fortunes were being made and spent with equal abandon. And the fishery was extremely dangerous- boats and men were lost at sea on a regular basis every winter. The elements of youth and money and danger made Kodiak an exhilarating place to be.
And then, in 1982, it ended. The crab went away, for reasons still not fully understood. People moved on to other fisheries, to other occupations, or off the island. The fishermen got older and started having kids. The town quieted down. But the stories remained, filtering through the collective memory of Kodiak and other fishing communities along Alaska’s Gulf coast and down to Seattle, stories of huge catches and crazy paychecks, of wild behavior and hard, hard work, of being young and invincible, of a fishery that seemed at the time to be forever. It was that feeling, those stories, which Kodiak Maritime Museum has tried to capture in its oral history project, before the people who had lived them went away themselves. And on its own, the oral history project has been very successful in preserving the stories and creating an audience for them in Kodiak and beyond.
By interpreting Alaska’s maritime heritage through the faces of the people who lived through the king crab years, the proposed photo portrait project directly supports the museum’s mission to recognize and preserve Alaska’s maritime history. Beyond that however, the staff and board of KMM strongly believe that a history museum must be not merely a keeper of the past, but be also relevant to the community it serves. For communities to appreciate and value their history and culture that history and culture must be nurtured and interpreted. The link between the present and the past must constantly be made new. Including communities in the process of interpreting the past is a very good way to do that, because it helps a museum, especially a history museum, design its projects from within the consciousness of the community, rather than from outside it. Our photo portrait project brings the men and women who lived the king crab years into the museum as participants. It presents their faces as a way to augment their voices in the oral history project and as such it brings them, and people around them, into the interpretive process itself.
We believe presenting both the voices of King Crab fishery participants telling stories from the past, combined with images of their faces, will illuminate this important part of Alaska’s maritime history in a powerful way.
"When Crab Was King" is one of many oral history projects nationwide which seek to record the first-hand experiences of commercial fishermen and their communities. Find more on the National Marine Fisheries Services "Voices from the Fisheries" website http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/voicesfromthefisheries/
Developed with funding from Alaska Humanities Forum, Kodiak Lions Club, Alaskan Leader Fisheries Foundation,
Alaska State Museums and Baranov Museum.
    
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