United States
Kodiak Island
The world's largest brown bears fish salmon streams on America's second-largest island.
The bear stands in the shallows and takes a sockeye mid-leap with a motion so practised it looks casual, while two more work the same pool. Kodiak smells of wet spruce, river mud and the iron tang of a salmon run in full flood.
Kodiak Island runs over a hundred miles long and 3,670 square miles, Alaska's largest island and the second-largest in the United States, yet pavement covers only a fraction of it; beyond the road ends, access is floatplane and boat. The wildlife refuge covering most of Kodiak holds about 3,500 Kodiak brown bears, the biggest bears on Earth, with males that normally top 800 pounds and have been known to exceed 1,500, standing over ten feet tall. Salmon streams within reach of town let you watch bears fish in season without a fly-out, though the classic viewing is guided and airborne. Kodiak is also Alaska's largest fishing port, home port to some 770 commercial vessels, and the Alutiiq Museum in town holds the material record of 7,500 years of island life.
Solo
Floatplane out to a salmon stream with a guide, watch the biggest bears alive do their work and come back to a harbour town that smells of the day's landings.
Friends
Charter a boat or plane between salmon runs and halibut grounds, and let the trip become the story you never quite tell right.
- Kodiak brown bears are the largest on Earth: refuge males normally exceed 800 pounds and can pass 1,500, standing over ten feet.
- The island is Alaska's largest and America's second-largest, over a hundred miles long with most of it reachable only by floatplane or boat.
- The Port of Kodiak is Alaska's largest fishing port, home to roughly 770 commercial vessels across trawl, longline, crab and salmon fleets.
- The Alutiiq Museum in town carries 7,500 years of island heritage, one of the deepest Indigenous coastal collections in North America.
Whatever the fleet landed that morning: cod, halibut and all five salmons, sold where Alaska's largest fishing fleet ties up.
Crab feasts each spring at the festival the town has thrown since 1958 to celebrate what the sea provides.
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