Boatyards around Bristol Bay are filling up again as vessels haul out for winter. As KDLG's Austin Fast met folks getting ready to hit the water in June, he noticed the word "family" kept popping up for those boatyard friendships out-of-staters form in Alaska.
Dillingham’s boatyards are peaceful parking lots much of the year, but they transform entirely for just a couple short weeks before the sockeye salmon run in early June and at the end of the season in late July.
Fishermen flood into Bristol Bay from around the globe, creating a diverse itinerant community complete with vendors hawking their wares.
Dannielle Carbone of Vashon Island near Seattle collects semiprecious stones and unusual beads from around the globe and turns them into jewelry. For several days in June, she piled just about every color and shape of bead imaginable on a scrap of plywood near the F/V Karen II, which she and her husband own.
Look closely at fishermen through the PAF yard, and you’ll spot her chunky beads around their many of their necks or wrists. For her, this time of year is all about savoring the pop-up community.
"It's an annual get-together, a reconnection. It's like camping with your buddies. It's a reunion. There’s all of this goings on and energy and people riding their bicycle all over the place and then there’s nobody because everyone’s fishing," Carbone said.
Mendi Jenkins of Marine Refrigeration Solutions sifted through strands of pyrite, labradorite and Ethiopian metal beads at Carbone’s table with her 16-year-old daughter. She’s been consulting with fishermen on how to install refrigerated water systems for five summers, and she now tries to limit herself to just one necklace a year.
"I love the history behind all of her work, and I love that her jewelry is different than anything that you see in the stores," Jenkins said. "It also warms my heart that it reminds me of my time up here in the Bay. I like having these kind of traditions, right?"
She’s handing that tradition down to her daughter Julianne Short, who she brought north from Washington for the first time this summer.
“She told me to come and just see what speaks to me, and if any will pop out. I think this one may be my favorite," Short said, noting how light and delicate it looked.
Carbone is not the only one who sets up shop in the boatyard. She threw a towel over her jewelry and led the way through a maze of boats behind the Karen II.
On the other side, Antonia Radon of Arapawa Island, New Zealand, was selling blue pearl jewelry from a Conex shipping container that she spruced up with fresh flowers and homemade cookies.
"The beautiful shell here is a paua shell," Radon said, showing off a luminous sea snail shell. "They’re real unique to New Zealand, this shell, because of their color (and) the luster there. The purples and the greens. The blues."
Radon’s husband Mike has been fishing Bristol Bay for 13 years and even bringing their three kids to help. Antonia would stay home to tend their farm and abalone, or sea snail, until a few years back.
"I was like missing out on all the action. They were saying to meet all these great friends and having another family – that I was missing out over here," she said.
The whole Radon family works like an assembly line to crank out about 5,000 blue pearls a year. They dive in New Zealand’s Cook Strait to collect abalone snails. Mike drills holes in the shells, and their teenage son Jacob jimmies a nylon insert down between the animal and its shell. Four years later, the snail has formed a pearl to deal with the irritant, and the Radons saw it out to put into jewelry.
Antonia unscrewed a case to show off a top-quality pearl.
"When you take them out to the daylight, the colors just shimmer and they have a real 'wow factor' about them," Radon said.
She could probably get better sales in a more central part of Dillingham, but she wouldn’t have her stand anywhere but the boatyard.
"People say, 'Well, you should go to the airport.' One guy who owns the laundromat, he wanted me to go there, but I’m kind of here for the fishermen," Radon said. "We've met some great people here, good friends who certainly treat us like family, and so we feel like this is part of our home."
Carbone can relate. She extends a wholesale price – what she calls a family discount – to her fishing friends.
Give it just a few more weeks, and the boatyard will once again go silent, awaiting next year’s big family reunion.
Contact the author at austin@kdlg.org or 907-842-2200.
