12:58pm Kenai, AK
So the Buddha in the muffler is a shrine the fisherman built after said muffler blew up. Mystery solved.
There is no work for processing today. They are going to open up for fisherman tomorrow but there is talk of closing down commercial fishing for the season in the next few days. (sport fishing will remain open - apparently that is where the money is for the city of Kenai and it doesn't hurt that a few members of the fish and game board are avid sports fisherman.) They were expecting 750,000 salmon to run across a certain point by a certain time and so far only 300,000 salmon have run. It's looking pretty grim. The owner will try to buy some fish from around the area for us to process but I don't think there are many people wanting to get rid of fish. The pinks have started running but at $0.10/lb the fisherman have to catch at least 7,000-8,000 just to break even after filling their gas tanks. The scientists didn't think it was going to be a good season and i hate to be debbie downer but it looks like they were right. No amount of fiery weeds or rainy days are going to make the fish run before they are ready. Apparently last time this happened and they closed the season early they had to dynamite the salmon later because there were too many of them.