Catching Up With Erin and Hig - The Most Beautiful Photo of Herring Eggs I've Ever Seen

In April, Erin McKittrick, Bretwood Higman and kids went down to Sitka during the herring harvest. Among the pictures they took was the one above. Erin has made jewelry, and I suspect her art helped inform how to frame this amazing picture of impending life and its unfathomable richness.

Back in 1975, Judy's first trip to Alaska was to help me harvest herring roe on sea vegetables near Bligh Island on Prince William Sound. The beauty of the combination of the roe's transparency or opacity upon the green or gold or brown of the underwater vegetation, especially when gleaming in the late April sunshine in mid-afternoon, was glorious. The rich smell of the loads of herring-laden kelp, as it came out of the water and onboard our skiff was sometimes overwhelming in its signal that life goes on and reappears miraculously.