FISHERIES

Projects & Studies

Qitga

Where the sea meets the river

Our Chugach Tribes are deeply interconnected with the region’s fisheries, stewarding the ocean, rivers, and lakes for over 10,000 years. The Chugach region supports a diversity of fish species in salt and fresh waters including, but not limited to, salmon, trout, rockfish, halibut, herring and lingcod. Fish are more than a resource for the Chugach Alaska Natives. They tether Tribal Members to cultural continuity, spirituality, subsistence and local economies. Elders of the Chugach region continue teaching traditional stewardship practices and bestowing wisdom to protect our fisheries for millennia to come.

Projects & Studies

Nanwalek Salmon
Enhancement

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Regional Freshwater
Fish Inventory

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“Leave it alone. It’s not ours, it’s for each generation. It’s not ours to determine.”

Emilie Swenning (Elder from Nanwalek)

Iqsak Vision - Chugach Regional Resources Commission

Wally Kvasnikoff

Asgurluni

Fish fighting the current

CRRC’s Tribal Fisheries Program serves on behalf of its seven communities to ensure our Tribes’ voices are heard in fisheries decision-making. Our Fisheries Program works alongside our Tribes to advocate for management and future planning that supports community resilience. The Tribal Fisheries Program is guided by Tribal priorities and grounded in Traditional Ecological Knowledge. We collaborate with state, federal, academic, and nonprofit entities to carry out fisheries research, monitoring, and restoration across the Chugach region.

Tribal Fisheries Priorities

Monitoring
&
Research

Habitat Assessment
&
Restoration

Traditional Ecological
Knowledge & Cultural
Continuity

Monitoring & Research

CRRC supports Tribes in collecting fisheries data that reflects local priorities and supports Tribal management. This includes escapement monitoring, juvenile fish sampling, disease monitoring, and habitat assessments. Whenever possible, monitoring is led by Tribal members and local crews, strengthening community employment opportunities.

Habitat Assessment & Restoration

Healthy habitat is essential to healthy fish. The program works with Tribes and agency partners to identify habitat concerns and pursue restoration projects that improve fish passage, water quality, and spawning and rearing conditions. This work often addresses legacy impacts from past development while supporting long-term resilience.

Traditional
Ecological Knowledge &
Cultural Continuity

CRRC partners with Tribes to document and honor Traditional Ecological Knowledge related to fisheries, recognizing that Indigenous observations of timing, abundance, habitat use, and environmental change are critical to understanding fish populations. TEK projects support intergenerational knowledge sharing and culturally grounded education.

“Learning to see from one eye with the Strengths of indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, and
from the other eye with the strengths of mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes
together, for the benefit of all,”

– envisaged by Elder Dr. Albert Marshall

Learn More about Our Subsistence Alliance

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