An overflight Sunday afternoon showed the beach was still oily, but the workers were gone. Garbage bags of oily rags were on the beach. On the other side of Naked Island, a milky plume of herring sperm streamed from a gravel beach into the dark, stained water of the Sound. Two eagles and a flock of gulls fed on the spawning herring and a group of sea lions floated nearly motionless over the school. Brown globs of emulsified oil drifted on the water in strings.
Oil can kill herring and their eggs.
Cordova herring fisherman Ken Adams, shut out of the fishery by the oil spill, watched the spawning fish from a sea plane overhead. Adams said he agrees with a decision by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to close the fishery, because he hopes to assure future runs. He still hopes to fish for salmon this year. Daily News reporter Don Hunter contributed to this story. Make the Anchorage Daily News your source for Alaska and Anchorage history.