Our Ocean (portfolio)

Great Bear Sea

Photography by Thomas Peschak
Every morning Gitga’at fisherman Wally Bolton heads out to sea in his small aluminium skiff. Just beyond Hartley Bay the water is more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) deep and this is where he sets his lines for Pacific halibut, the largest and heaviest flat fish in the world.
Considered to be the world’s most delicious crustacean, the Dungeness crab is an important food source for the Gitga’at First Nation. Schoolteacher and Hartley Bay councillor Cameron Hill pulls up one of his traps filled with crabs.