When Crab Was King: The Rise and Fall of the Kodiak King Crab Fishery

Join us as we launch a new historical fisheries program. An Oral History of the Kodiak King Crab Fishery is a year-long series of shows based on interviews of Kodiak fishermen, processor workers, and others who lived and fished this amazing, though short-lived, fishery.

The first program features crab biologist Guy Powell summarizing the crab fishery and Kodiak fishermen Robbie Hoedel remembering what it was like when he was a kid fishing crab.

This special program is produced by the Kodiak Maritime Museum with funding from the Alaska Humanaties Forum.

Kodiak Fish Tales, Petroglyphs and Pioneers: An Oral History Program

Typical of most fishing ports, Kodiak residents hail from many countries and cultural backgrounds. Yet old-timers share a strong bond firmly tied to the maritime heritage that characterizes Kodiak. During their lifetime, Kodiak old-timers witnessed and participated in the town’s dramatic development from a small fishing village of 400 people to one of the top fishing ports in the nation. Kodiak Maritime Museum launched Kodiak Fish Tales, Petroglyphs and Pioneers: An Oral History Program in collaboration Kodiak’s other museums, the Alutiiq Museum, Baranov Museum and Kodiak Military History Museum, to capture accounts of this spectacular period of growth and change and to preserve our elders’ firsthand recollections for posterity.

Commercial fishing is the backbone of the Kodiak economy today as it has been throughout the ages. But Kodiak elders knew a different world. They fished on the open ocean in seal skin kayaks and rowing dories, and on sail-powered salmon boats and wooden scows. They worked on salmon fish traps, at whaling stations and the many salmon canneries that once operated in remote bays. They knew Kodiak before World War II arrived in force at its doorstep. And they remember Kodiak and the villages long before the 1964 tsunami flooded waterfronts and rearranged landscapes. Tragically, most firsthand accounts of these earlier times and events have not been recorded. Only small circles of family and friends have heard old-timers describe the natural world they knew and the historic events they lived.

KMM feels a sense of urgency to capture these stories before they are forever lost. No other oral history project like it is under way in Kodiak. At a time when Alaska’s commercial fishing industry and coastal communities are undergoing sweeping changes, it is imperative to record details of the past for the benefit of the future before the next chapter unfolds and buries them. The Fish Tales archive includes recorded interviews of 19 of Kodiak’s old-timers, several of whom have passed on since the recordings. More interviews are underway.

• Click here for the list of recordings and details of how to purchase them.