Ekuk Fisheries is a historic salmon cannery on Ekuk Spit, on the eastern shore of Nushagak Bay at Ekuk Cape, about 16 miles (26 km) south-southwest of Dillingham and 1.4 miles (2.2 km) south of Clark’s Point, Alaska. Nushagak Bay is an arm of Bristol Bay. The site was originally a Yup’ik settlement, first reported in 1824 by Russian accounts as “Village Ekouk” and in 1828 by Friedrich Benjamin Graf von Lütke, a Russian navigator, geographer and Arctic explorer. The name “Ekuk” means “the last village below,” referring to its position as the southernmost settlement on Nushagak Bay. Ekuk Spit lies seaward of the steep bluffs of Ekuk Cape, which extend north and south along the bay. The cape is formed by glacial moraine and outwash deposits; the spit consists mainly of tidal and estuarine deposits.

Ekuk is thought to have been a major Yup’ik village. After 1818, Russians employed local Natives as guides navigating boats up Nushagak Bay to the Aleksandrovsk trading post. Several canneries opened on the bay between 1888 and 1889, drawing residents away from Ekuk, as did the Moravian Mission at Carmel. In 1903 the North Alaska Salmon Company built a cannery at Ekuk, employing many villagers. In the 1940s, Wards Cove Packing Company built the cannery on Ekuk Spit; at peak operation, a seasonal workforce of around 400 people resided there. A school operated in the community from 1958 to 1974. In 2002, Wards Cove closed its salmon-processing facilities, including the Ekuk plant, citing falling salmon prices and declining participation by fishers. Today, Ekuk Fisheries operates a salmon-processing facility in the former Wards Cove plant, visited seasonally by fishing families and plant workers. The community comprises fishing shacks, seasonally occupied residences, gravel roads and a light-aircraft landing strip. The cannery, at the north end of the spit, supports a set-net fishery extending southward past Ekuk Bluff to Flounder Flat; commercial and subsistence set-net fisheries reach from the high-tide line through the intertidal zone into the subtidal zone. The shoreline also serves as a barge-access point and a source of driftwood.

Coastal erosion, driven by wind waves from the west and south and by vehicle traffic on the beach, is an ongoing threat. A 2007 assessment based on aerial photographs from 1963, 1981, 1993 and 2006; found that Ekuk Bluff had eroded 125 feet (38 m) between 1912 and 1981, and a further 65 feet (20 m) from 1981 to 2006, at rates of 2 and 2.6 feet (0.6 and 0.8 m) per year, respectively. Eroded sediment builds up the spit’s cannery end while the spit’s shoreline simultaneously retreats, shifting the entire shoreline east-northeast. It was estimated that the longest southward fetch was 122 miles (196 km), a mean spring tide elevation of 19.5 feet (6 m), storm surges of 10 feet (3 m) and average wave run-up of 5.4 feet (1.6 m). Seasonal-use homes, outbuildings, drying racks and smokehouses lie within 50 feet (15 m) of the eroding shore; the access road, a warehouse and a cemetery within 100 feet (30 m); a water-storage tank about 500 feet (152 m) away. The airport runway floods periodically but faces no erosion threat; inland residences on the highest beach ridges sit 300 to 400 feet (91 to 122 m) from the shoreline. Ekuk Fisheries has installed a sheet-pile steel wall around the dock that has proved effective in controlling erosion. See a video including historical imagery of Ekuk and salmon fishery here. Read more here and here. Explore more of Ekuk Fisheries and Nushagak Bay here: