Health Risks and Benefits of Commercial Fishing
             For thousands of years men and women have caught and captured fish and seafood to eat, trade, or sell. Throughout the centuries fishing practices and technologies have been perfected and developed along with larger and faster ships so that, like farmers, fisherman could feed a growing and developing world.
             Shortly after Columbus, Basque fishermen were finding profitable new fishing grounds off what is now New England and Nova Scotia. Commercial fishing played no small part in establishing the economy and character of the Northeast region of the United States. It took us Europeans another Three-hundred and some odd years to discover the fertile south eastern and central waters of Alaska, which have stood the test of time and are still the earth's most prosperous fishing grounds. Alaska's first Salmon cannery was operated in the Tlingit Indian Village of Klawock back in eighteen seventy-eight. Soon after, fish processing plants, "also known as canneries" were opened in my home town of Petersburg, as well as about twenty other coastal towns along the South Eastern and Central Alaska coast. (Bob Thorsenson, of Fishing for the future.)
             Since those early days of commercial fishing in Alaska, an entire sub-culture of people have evolved. They are the majority of people who inhabit south east Alaska,
             They are commercial Fisherman, and they live a lifestyle unlike any other. First of all, ninety percent of the communities in South East Alaska are located on islands, and ninety percent of the locals are fishermen or are employed at a job that is directly linked to the fishing industry. Like cannery workers, bar tenders, dock workers, welders, wood workers, refrigeration experts, or diesel mechanics. Fishing is what makes everything go round in South East Alaska. Logging used to be a huge thing as well, but in the recent years past it has been toned way down to pres...