My uppa shook me awake and told me to eat breakfast. So I opened my eyes and sat up in my bed. I looked at the clock and saw it was only 7 o'clock in the morning. Then I stood up and stumbled my way to the table and ate my breakfast. After I finished he asked me if I was ready to go fishing. I said I thought so and we got ready to go down to the boat. He told me that we had to get some gas and food before going, so we went to the gas station and got some of both, and then we took off down river.

When we reached the spot where we always went fishing we set our net and sat around waiting for fish to start pulling on it. When they really started to pull on the net we decided to pull it in. On out first set we almost filled up one whole tote, but it wasn't enough, he said, and he insisted that we catch more for my grandma to cut. He said it would be better if we moved a little bit farther upriver, so we rode for about twenty to thirty minutes and then we stopped. We set our net and waited for a long time, but nothing happened. The net started to sink, though, so we started pulling it in. Half way through we started pulling in a big load of dead and rotten fish, and when my uppa saw this he got really mad.

We noticed the fish had been cut open and we knew that they had come from upriver, so we decided to follow the trail of the dead fish until we found the source of the problem. We started upriver and we followed the trail for a long time. It was terrible seeing all those dead fish.

After a few hours we came to a barge, and we went around it, but after a couple of miles of no fish in sight my uppa remembered the barge and we turned back. When we were about a hundred yards away from the barge we saw them dump a load of fish overboard. As soon as we saw this we turned around and went back to town to call the police.

Then they immediately drove up to the barge, and when they saw what they were doing they arrested them and brought them to Bethel where they were charged with taking fish roe and wanton waste. They were later fined heavily and their barge was confiscated. My uppa and I were both glad that they were put out of business.

By Robert Pitka

Water Pollution