It was nearly midnight on July 4, and all over the vast Egegik district on the east side of Bristol Bay, the world's largest sockeye salmon run was homeward bound.

Just being there, in the words of drift gillnet fisherman David Harsilla, a veteran of 30 years in the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, "is an awesome experience. The sun is out day and night, and it never stops. You feel tired and you want to sleep, but you keep going. It's a short duration, high intensity, and it doesn't go on forever."

For thousands of years in Southwest Alaska this cycle has repeated itself, with wave after wave of sockeye salmon swimming instinctively toward natal streams to spawn in a promise for renewed sustenance for the Bristol Bay watershed.

En route millions of them are netted, but millions more escape upstream to spawn and sustain the fishery.

While the Alaska Department of Fish and Game annually determines the size of an escapement for each area of the bay, nobody ever knows for sure when the sockeye migration will begin and how big it will be.

Independence Day 2009 brought the second massive pulse of sockeyes into Egegik in barely a week. Fishermen in hundreds of boats trailing thousands of fathoms of drift gillnets harvested 7.4 million reds.

By July 16, the Bristol Bay run had reached nearly 39 million fish, with a cumulative harvest of nearly 30 million reds.

On that moonlit night of July 4, more than a dozen fishing tenders from fish processing companies also were waiting in the Egegik district, ready to receive hundreds of deliveries of the silvery, oil-rich sockeyes.

Within days the processed fish would be transported out of Bristol Bay, heading for markets worldwide, from fancy restaurants where fine wines would accompany the sockeye entrees to backyard barbeques, as well as international food aid programs that purchase canned wild Alaska salmon to feed inhabitants of poverty stricken nations.

Each sockeye salmon was handpicked from the gillnet, a physically intensive, repetitive task. Soon the decks were lined with fish. Crews moved quickly to get them to the iced holds in the deck.

Aboard one of the drift gillnetters, the F/V Isanotski from Kodiak, crewmembers Jack Maker and Josh White, with captain Shawn Dochtermann, worked quickly, picking hundreds of reds from their 150-fathom driftnet.

Soon their rain gear and boots were sparking in the moonlight, covered with tiny silvery scales that flicked off as the fish were pulled from the nets. Only afterward, when the net was picked clean - a harvest of 3,800 pounds of fish - would they hose down the deck and themselves.

Each fish - some so tangled the netting had to be cut - was carefully removed from the netting and quickly slipped into brailers, big nets in the deck's holds that have been prepared with slush ice to keep the fish in good condition. Crews mend the nets later, after the harvest.

With the reds secured in the iced holds, the drift gillnet was cast out again. Long lines of white floaters marked the scores of nets on the waters, a scene in an endless profusion of fishing boats.

Within 12 hours, all the shimmering sockeyes had been delivered to fishing tenders, which would take them on to processing facilities in Naknek and other processing plants, while fishermen waited to begin the ritual again, as soon as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the next set.

For the crew of the Isanotski, it was proving to be a good week. By noon on July 5, they had harvested several thousand pounds of reds, and captain Dochtermann anticipated the next set could put him over the per boat limit imposed by processors, which were having trouble keeping up with the surge of fish.

But that was OK, he said, because he had the option of assigning his excess harvest to another fisherman who hasn't brought in the day's limit.

By 1 p.m., dozens of boats were jockeying for position, putting out their nets for a second set. Given the steady surge of reds, "it's like plucking grapes, easy picking," Dochtermann said.

The Big One

The millions of sockeye, chinook, coho, chum and pink salmon harvested in Alaska each year is a provider to the world.

The fish provide millions of meals to people across the globe. The runs provide thousands of jobs for Alaskans and others, and puts millions of dollars in the state economy.

Yet the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery stands out as the largest and most famous of the state's salmon fisheries. It is the lifeblood and the soul of Western Alaska.

At first it was the Eskimo residents, who have inhabited the land for thousands of years, who sustained themselves with the fisheries of the Bristol Bay watershed. Then fishermen from the Pacific Northwest, and countries in Asia and Europe joined the harvesting and processing sectors.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the rallying cry of the Native land claims movement became "take our land; take our life." But the sea has always been part of the real estate, providing fish - the fishermen call it "red gold" - and other wildlife to sustain the people entrenched in a subsistence lifestyle.

With statehood, the commercial fishery began to attract others, so that today people whose ancestry runs to many nations converge each year to harvest the sockeyes.

The reach of the Bristol Bay watershed extends for hundreds of miles, and the spawning salmon contribute to local economies along the way.

According to a study sponsored in part by the National Parks Conservation Association, based on figures from 2006, Katmai and Lake Clark national parks account for about 80,000 visitors a year. Estimated contributions to the local economy are nearly $1.5 million at Lake Clark and $13.8 million in Katmai.

"It is really spectacular," said Norm Van Vactor, a veteran of the Bristol Bay fisheries and operations manager this year for Leader Creek Fisheries, a company that has a profit-sharing plan with local fishermen. "Mother Nature really does deliver. That's why so many of us feel so strongly about seeing that this lifestyle gets maintained."

While money is certainly an incentive, the fishery is more than that to harvesters. It is their life, as it has been for thousands of generations of people who have fished in Bristol Bay. And it's not just the few weeks when millions of salmon swim home to the bay, but the months of work before and after the fishery, to include maintenance, welding, painting and other work needed to ready the fishing vessel, organize a crew and supplies, and more.

"The vast majority of people involved in the fishery feel that way," Van Vactor said. "It provides a living and it affords them the opportunity to participate in something like this as well."

Harsilla, president of the Alaska Independent Fishermen's Marketing Association and a veteran of the Bristol Bay fishery, agreed.

"The money is not going to do it," Harsilla said. "It's a lifestyle. You get to participate in the most premier driftnet fishery in the world. If you like salmon fishing, it doesn't get any better than this. It's overwhelming for somebody who has never been out before."

That's particularly true for the season just winding down.

"We had lots of fishing time and very little time to rest up," he said. "We may have gotten less sleep this year than normal. It was virtually 'round the clock."

"Generally the first 15 minutes of an opening are very important," Harsilla said. "The fish are there and they are going to get netted up very fast, if you can make a good drift and get it in the water pretty fast."

It all depends on the expertise of the fisherman at the helm.

"He knows traditionally what happens," Harsilla said. "He is looking for indicators. Over time they identify key places at key times. This was a season where you didn't see many fish jumping, but they were there. And there is some luck to it too."

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska