Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • The Taku winds blow icy ridges that  overlook the Inside Passage. Stillness is only broken by the sound of skiers breaking through crusty snow to view the sunset view on top of Douglas Island nearby Juneau.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1086960.jpg
  • The Taku winds blow icy ridges that  overlook the Inside Passage, stunting the trees that frame the view on top of Douglas Island nearby Juneau.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1086959.jpg
  • The Taku winds blow icy ridges framing an overlook of the Inside Passage from Douglas Island and the Tongass National Forest near Juneau. Sunset comes early and days are short in the winter months with approximately 7 hours of light.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075060.jpg
  • In spite of the 200 inches of rain the area receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage, the route through a network of passages between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
One of the stops in Alaska’s Panhandle is the former logging town of Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MM7258_20050819_07149.tif
  • A small community seen from the air is located in the fringes of an estuary along the Lynn Canal part of the Inside Passage. The intertidal or littoral zone in Alaska's Southeast maintains a balance between the land and the sea. The habitat of fresh and salt water is harsh and critical for marine life and birds.
    MM7258_20060729_18732.tif
  • A kayaker carries his boat to higher ground to explore the wilderness in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Tidal changes are extreme along islands in the Inside Passage.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075153.jpg
  • Wilderness islands off Prince of Wales Island at the Dixon Entrance of the Inside Passage.<br />
Tongass National Forest covers 16.7 million acres stretching over mountains, bays, glaciers, 1,000 islands, 18,000 miles of coastline, and almost all of mainland Southeast Alaska. Approximately 94% of Southeast Alaska is federally managed lands, and of that, 60% is set aside as Congressionally-designated Wilderness, National Parks, and National Monuments.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075088.jpg
  • The Inside Passage is a draw for cruise ship passengers to shop and sightsee in Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores.<br />
Once a logging town, the city now depends on a growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Southeast Alaska every year—sometimes doubling a town’s population in one day.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075051.TIF
  • Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops in Ketchikan - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former logging town.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075023.TIF
  • Estuaries seen from the air along the Lynn Canal are shrouded in morning fog. The intertidal or littoral zone maintains a balance between the land and the sea. The shoreline is along the Inside Passage in Alaska's Southeast is a combination of saltwater and freshwater, a hostile environment but a habitat refuge for some species.
    MM7258_20060729_18629.tif
  • A cruise ship docks at Ketchikan's harbor bringing a city full of tourists for shopping and sightseeing. The once logging town is dependent on the growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. <br />
The ships travel the Inside Passage, a network of waterways between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. <br />
Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075021.TIF
  • Cruise ships dock at Ketchikan's harbor, while another waits its' turn. In spite of the 200 inches of rain the region receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops and as many as 500 a year. The Inside Passage is a network of channels between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
The former logging town of Ketchikan, now relies on tourism. Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1073531.TIF
  • A boy waits inside the cabin while his father and friend fish in the waters off of Prince of Wales Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075144.jpg
  • Store window reflections mirror cruise ships arriving to unload shoppers and sightseers in the former logging town of Ketchikan located in Alaska’s Panhandle. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MM7258_20050905_12198.tif
  • Swede, a float house owner, bows farewell to guests as they leave for the evening near Prince of Wales Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075170.jpg
  • Father and daugter kayak on still water near Moser Island which separates North and South Arms Hoonah Sound on Chichagof Island in Tongass National Forest.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075162.jpg
  • A young girl investigates sea life at low tide on Moser Island in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075155.jpg
  • A proud father photographs his son holding up the salmon he caught on their fishing trip.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075145.jpg
  • Islands are surrounded by icy waters near Glacier Bay National Park. The wilderness contains rugged mountains, glaciers, rainforest and wild coastlines with sheltered fjords in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Petroglyph Beach is a State Historic Site with a collection of petroglyphs carved by Tlingit Native Alaskans. At low tide, the site reveals a series of 40 different rock sketches overlooking the Stikine River and Zimovia Straits.
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  • Children play on swings in the town park above the marina in Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075084.jpg
  • Father and daughter share a tender moment on their boat which is home for the family during fishing season off the coast of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska’s Southeast. When not the fishing for salmon, the family lives on nearby Marble Island and the children are home schooled.<br />
Alaska’s largest and most valuable fisheries target salmon, pollock, crab, herring, halibut, shrimp, sablefish, and Pacific cod.<br />
The total value of Alaska’s commercial fisheries is $1.5 billion for the fishermen, with a wholesale value of $3.6 billion. Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy. Fisheries management in Alaska is based on scientific assessments and monitoring of harvested populations and is regarded as a model of successful natural resource stewardship.
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  • Family and friends clean crabs to prepare for dinner at their float house on Piggy Cove in Southeast Alaska.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075079.jpg
  • Cradling his puppy, “Meatball,” a youth hangs out on the dock of the float house. The family built their home off the coast of Prince of Wales Island which is only accessible by float plane or by boat. The houses are characteristic of Southeast Alaska, tied down with ropes and floating on the water in an isolated bay.<br />
Life in remote Alaska offers adventures and an atypical lifestyle rich in experiences.
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  • Estuaries shrouded in morning fog are revealed in the intertidal region of the Southeast Alaskan coast along the Lynn Canal in Alaska's Southeast.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075072.TIF
  • A Native Alaskan family crosses a stream while hiking with their dog through the woods. They are headed back to their fish camp on Lisianski Peninsula on the west coast of Baranof Island.
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  • A family sets up racks to dry salmon and prepares it for smoking at a Native Alaskan Tlingit fish camp at Dog Point near Sitka.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075050.jpg
  • Float planes dock to board and carry tourists, then take off over cruise ships to sightsee glaciers, whales and bears. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
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  • Trees in the Tongass National Forest, which is a temperate rainforest, grow on a moss-covered rocky shore near Sitka Sound.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075039.jpg
  • Crew members from a family fishing operation land approximately 1,000 Coho salmon in the boat from a purse seine in waters near Craig, Alaska.<br />
Alaska’s fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, overfishing, exploitation, and poor fisheries management in the ‘40s and ‘50s took a heavy toll on the industry. The state adopted drastic measures that saved the fishing industry from collapse. Tough times again hit the fishermen in the 1970s as the number of boats grew and increasingly efficient gear depleted catch levels to record lows.<br />
Permit systems and reserves helped the commercial industry recover in the late ‘70s—a trend that has continued to the present because of cooperation between scientists and fishermen.<br />
Fishermen and loggers rank in the top two spots for most dangerous jobs. Both are common lines of work for people in the Alaskan outdoors. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking fatal occupational injuries in 1980, there were 4,547 fatal work injuries in 2010, and fatality rates of some occupations remain alarmingly high.
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  • Crew members refer to this maneuver as the  "fish walk" when they slide across a boat's deck to push pink salmon into the ice storage area. The fishermen were seining in the waters in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Alaska’s fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, overfishing, exploitation, and poor fisheries management in the ‘40s and ‘50s took a heavy toll on the industry. The state adopted drastic measures that saved the fishing industry from collapse. Tough times again hit the fishermen in the 1970s as the number of boats grew and increasingly efficient gear depleted catch levels to record lows.<br />
<br />
Permit systems and reserves helped the commercial industry recover in the late ‘70s—a trend that has continued to the present because of cooperation between scientists and fishermen.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075032.jpg
  • Clearing fog slowly dissipates above islands and the reflective, quiet waters in Sitka Sound. Alexander Archipelago has around 1,100 islands, which are actually the tops of a submerged section of the Coast Ranges in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Rays of sunlight pierce the clouds hanging over Sitka Sound and Baranof Island. Southeast Alaska receives about 200 inches of rain a year creating its moody ambiance.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1073532.TIF
  • Fog lifts over forested islands and muskeg terrain above Sitka Sound. Tongass National Forest is 17 million acres, the largest temperate rainforest in the world.
    MM7258_20050820_07655.tif
  • For an anniversary celebration, a husband surprised his wife with a romantic candle-lit dinner in a tent perched above a secluded beach on Prince of Wales Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075169.jpg
  • Two girls beach-comb near the water's edge investigating crabs and other sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075154.jpg
  • A boy proudly displays the salmon he caught when the family was fishing near Prince of Wales Island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075143.jpg
  • Living on a float house in a quiet bay, a woman drives a boat to Thorne Bay for supplies and to take her children to school on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • A rustic, float house, characteristic in Southeast Alaska, is reflected in the waters at dusk. The structure is tied off in a protected cove and accessible only by boat or float plane. Swede and his dog stand on the dock and watch for the evening guests' arrival.
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  • A commercial fishing boat loaded with nets departs in calm waters through Frederick Sound in Southeast Alaska.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075095.jpg
  • Aerial view of timber that is loaded for export onto a ship on South Prince of Wales. The forest industry depends on overseas sales and load floating logs from a nearby mill in a protected bay.
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  • The Taku River flows out of the Coastal Range in British Columbia to 100 miles northeast of Juneau, Alaska. <br />
A world-class wilderness, the Taku River watershed contains some of the richest wildlife habitat in North America and is teeming with grizzlies, wolves, Stone’s sheep, moose, woodland caribou, migratory birds, and abundant populations of salmon.  The Taku is southeast Alaska’s top salmon-producing river with nearly 2 million wild salmon returning to the river annually.
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  • Estuaries along the Lynn Canal are shrouded in morning fog while Lion's Head in the Tongass National Forest rises above.
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  • Ice-covered peaks of South Chilkat Mountains appear to have frosting on their tops from melting snow.
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  • A storm clears creating a serene landscape along the Mendenhall River after a light, morning snow on trees and surrounding mountains in the Tongass National Forest.
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  • Water flows off the tail of a diving humpback whale  (Megaptera novaeangliae). Studies show the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • A few cars make a traffic jam on a rainy afternoon at the main intersection in Coffman, Cove, Alaska, population 200.<br />
What began as a logging town on Prince of Wales Island is mostly made up of people who stayed on when the industry declined. Boats and off road vehicles are plentiful and a road connects the community to other parts of the island.
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  • Fog drifts over a secluded estuary and the Thorne River on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. The main island includes hundreds of adjacent smaller islands—a total of more than 2,600 square miles with 990 miles of coastline and countless bays coves, inlets, and points.<br />
Fjords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features.
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  • Tongass National Forest is the largest remaining “temperate rainforest” in the world. Islands above Sitka Sound's steep, rugged mountainsides are often cloaked in fog because it receives up to 200 inches of rain a year. The land contains slowly draining granite soil with reflective muskeg bogs as well as limestone karst.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075038.TIF
  • Heads together, two girl friends beach-comb near the water's edge investigating sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska. <br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075009.jpg
  • A Bald Eagle in flight catches a fish with its talons. Their wingspans measure 7½ ft. The average weight is 10-12 pounds, some weigh up to 16 pounds. Bald Eagles can pick up and fly off with a fish or other prey items that weigh 4-5 pounds, any more weight than that is too heavy and they will stall out and crash.
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  • Passengers line up under the starts to wait to board a cruise ship after a rainy afternoon in the dry season in Alaska's Southeast. Tourism is once again a growing business driving the economy in coastal communities.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075037.jpg
  • Timber is loaded for export onto a ship in protected waters on South Prince of Wales island. The forest industry depends on overseas sales of wood that is shipped mostly to Asia.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075022.jpg
  • A camper juggles outside a cabin to pass time before a trek into the wilderness to explore and survey old growth forests in Alaska's Southeast.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075151.jpg
  • LeConte Glacier is in the Stikine Icefield is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles but is considered stable.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075058.jpg
  • Tracy Arm Fjord is formed by a retreating glacier melting between granite walls. Sawyer Glacier calves into the fjord in the heart of the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness in Southeast Alaska.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075046.jpg
  • Seaplane over Ketchikan Harbor with one of the many cruise ships.
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  • Houses built above Ketchikan Harbor where many cruise ships dock.
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  • Barges with containers wait in Ketchikan Harbor.
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  • South Chilkat Mountain peaks are kissed with warm light at sunset above the Icy Strait. High winds sweep ice and snow from ridge tops creating a landscape that is severe, yet appears serene.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075066.jpg
  • Fog-draped forest wilderness and rugged mountains are typical in Southeast Alaska where the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest receives an average of 200 inches of precipitation a year.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075040.jpg
  • Houses line Ketchikan Harbor and fishing boats in marina.
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  • Cruise ship docked at Ketchikan Harbor dwarfs houses on hillside.
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  • Crisp winter air clears over freshly snow-dusted trees in Tongass National Forest looking across the Icy Strait in the Inside Passage toward Southeast Alaska’s Chilkat Mountain Range. The region is known for it’s harsh winds and rugged landscape as well as it’s beauty.<br />
Chilkat, in the native Tlingit language, means “storage container for salmon.” The name was given because of warm springs that keep the Chilkat River from freezing during the winter as it flows through the mountain range, thus allowing salmon to spawn late in the season, and creating safe “storage.”
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  • Nuns walk through a cobblestone passage inside Santa Catalina Convent. They are  followed by a dog that greets them while wandering freely the convent.
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