OUTDOORSMEN WONDER IF WILDLIFE WILL EVER BE THE SAME

By LEW FREEDMAN
Daily News Sports Editor

ANCHORAGE- The day the fish all died. Maybe.Mike Buck wonders. On summer days at home, Buck walks down to the dock in Valdez with his 9yearold son. They dip their fishing poles into the water of Prince William Sound and pink salmon jump onto the hooks.

Happens for everyone. Coolers are filled with squirming fish. The pinks are hungry fish. It is something to see.

"I take my son down there and he catches 21 fish," said Buck, who guides river rafting trips. "Will we be able to do that again? I don't know."

The day the fish all died. Maybe.

The day the birds all died. Maybe.

And the sea otters. And the sea lions. Maybe.

The day more than 10 million gallons of oil spilled into Prince William Sound signaled the death of a lot of things. Wildlife and a way of life.

Anger. Disbelief. Frustration. Those emotions seized us soon after the oilladen Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef about 25 miles from port and began hemorrhaging oil into a pristine ecosystem.

Anger that it occurred at all, out of stupidity or recklessness. Disbelief that Exxon was so illprepared to clean it up. Frustration that the oil sat in a slimy puddle under sunny skies and in calm seas for two days before anyone did much of anything.

We felt it all, feel it still. It will be a long time healing the scars on the waters and islands of Prince William Sound. And the scars on our hearts, too.

No one loves the outdoors more than outdoorsmen. To one degree or another, we are all here in Alaska for the country. Some of us love the mountains most. Some love the water. Some love the woods. All of it together is our beautiful land. And all of us together feel the insult of the oil, the violence the oil has done to our land.

There are a lot of Mike Bucks under one roof in Sullivan Arena at the Great Alaskan Sportsman Show this weekend. Men and women who love the country. Men and women with oil on their minds.

"It's so huge. If you put the whole population of the state out there you couldn't clean it up," said Sean Martin, who runs halibut fishing trips out of Homer. "The time to clean it up was the first two days. They blew it."

Fishermen wonder if it is all over for Prince William Sound, if the salmon will disappear soon, or in a few years when this cycle of salmon fry should return in full adulthood. Or even if they don't die, will they be contaminated?

And fishermen wonder, too, will the oil spread on the tide and the wind and despoil other fishing grounds? They hear it is heading toward Resurrection Bay and Kachemak Bay. What to believe? What to feel?

Sadness. Well, there's that, too. The picture of the bird on the front page of the newspaper did it for wildlife photographer David Rhode of Homer.

"A live, oilsoaked bird kind of hits home," he said.

Day by day he's read accounts of oil spreading to new places. Eleanor Island, Ingot Island, Green Island. Rhode used to study harbor seals for the Department of Fish and Game on the islands. The oil has spread to the places where he used to watch them. Rhode's summer plan was to shoot pictures of otters off of Valdez.

"There'll be some otters left," he said hopefully.

They still have hope in Cordova.

Kathy Sherman of the Cordova Chamber of Commerce has her own booth at the Sportsman Show. She's got piles of cometoCordovaandfish brochures on a table and a handwritten message pinned to her hip. "We've been slicked, but we're not licked," it reads.

A community of fishermen, that's Cordova. Oily fish. That may be the Cordova harvest. The day the fish all die is the day Cordova dies.

People visiting the Cordova booth carry messages of sympathy.

"They come and look at you and say, "We're so sorry,"' said Sherman.

To date, no one from Exxon has dropped by to apologize. Not to her, the fish, the otters or the birds.

"It bothers me to think about the wildlife that's being affected that we'll never see," said Sherman. "It's not that they'll wash up at your door."

People want to help some way. Tshirts are being sold at the Sportsman Show with a picture of an oilslicked sea otter and the words "An ounce of protection's worth 11 million gallons of cure" on them. Ten bucks. Six bucks of it goes to the Cordova District Fishermen United.

What to feel?

Betrayal. Betrayal, for sure. Those foolish enough to believe Big Oil now feel like fools. Big Oil bought the state a long time ago. Everyone thought Big Oil just owned the oil. Not the land, the sea and the air as well. How naive we were. Just as the land, the sea and the air belong to us all, so does the spill. Yes, Big Oil, we do take it personally.

"It's like something really hurts physically," said Michelle Kubek, 36, a lifelong Alaskan who runs a king salmon fishing guide service on the Kenai River. "I feel so cheated."

Kubek took oil money during pipeline days. Built a house on the profits. She wondered then what Big Oil would do to Alaska, but convinced herself it would be all right. That was then, and this is now, and now she feels ashamed.

"I feel like I've been tricked," she said. "I feel guilty that I fell for it."

We're not sure what the bill will be for what we fell for. But don't listen too hard when Big Oil tells you that we're lucky it's here to pay our government bills. Big Oil does image damage control better than it does oil spill damage control. Big Oil isn't a charity. Big Oil is here for the profit, not for the love of the country.

Big Oil still wants to expand into Bristol Bay and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Reminds you of the words in the Janis Joplin song: "Take another little piece of my heart." More scars waiting to happen.

The oil spill will make life harder for Big Oil to become Bigger Oil. But the oil spill has already made life harder for the fish, the sea otters, the sea lions and the birds of Prince William Sound.

Harder for those it hasn't yet killed.

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