Green Daily

I went to Alaska for the first time last summer. I surprised myself, since I had always thought it was the kind of place you went after you turned 65 to gaze at fjords from the comfort of a vast boat.

And while the scenery did turn out to be remarkable (all encountered on foot, by the way), the fish was no less so. Best. Salmon. Ever.

Which is why I'm grieved to tell you that Chinook salmon (also known as king salmon) wont be commercially available until the Alaskan fishing season opens in July, and, when it does, the fish will be very expensive.

That's because Chinook salmon are usually fished up and down the Pacific coast beginning in May. But this year, the entire population seems to have disappeared without a trace.

No one is quite sure of the cause, perhaps because a variety of causes is the cause: mismanagement of the Sacramento River is one. Climate change and related change in ocean current is another. As a much-passed-around New York Times article indicates, the question is still up in the air. Or under the sea, if you will.