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21st Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest People
Salmon Girl

I took this photo in a Koryak fishing camp on the shore of the Bering Sea. The Koryaks are an indigenous people of the north of the Kamchatka Peninsula. United by families, they caught pink salmon, which came to spawn in the middle of summer. The first pink salmon is the most desirable and the heads are considered a delicacy. Koryaks eat them raw, sucking and gnawing them like lollipops, because they are cartilaginous. However, I was surprised by a young girl, because her peers rarely adhere to the taste of their ancestors, and I saw such a picture for the first time in several years. Ossora town, near which the photo was taken, is translated from the Koryak language as the House of Pink salmon.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 07.2023
Date Uploaded: 11.2023
Photo Location: Ossora, Russia
Camera: DMC-G6
Copyright: © Ilya Abramov