But good times are fading into memory for villagers like Evelyn Thomas, who has lived in Crooked Creek her entire life.

"In my language, fish is called 'the food'," says Thomas, a half Yupik, half Athabascan native Alaskan who says she has little money to buy food to replace the salmon.

"When we don't get 'the food', a staple of our diet is missing."

Over the past five years, Alaska's king salmon have begun to disappear from the state's rivers, and no-one is sure why.