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Prince William Sound, Alaska, 1998

Pacific salmon are born in fresh water, but spend most of their adult lives in saltwater. As adults, the only time they return to fresh water is to spawn (in the same stream where they were hatched). Soon after spawning, the adult Pacific salmon will expire.

(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In the Wake of the Spill: Ten Years After [Exxon Valdez]," March 1999, National Geographic Traveler magazine)

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski