The buried treasure that's tearing Alaska apart

"If pollution gets into that water supply," says Dan Schindler, head of the Alaska Salmon Program, "it's going to be nearly impossible to contain."

As these squirming schools defy gravity by surging upstream, they inject ocean nutrients into the land and feed every form of life, from bears to eagles to humans. With a constitutional mandate to protect the run, Alaska limits the catch, but still manages to net nearly half of the world's supply of sockeye each July.

More than two billion salmon have been caught in Bristol Bay since records began, and fish are the lifeblood of local industry.

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