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EGEGIK - On the moonlit waters of Bristol Bay, lush with millions of wild Alaska salmon, fishermen silhouetted against the sky began pulling in their nets, laden with a harvest of thousands of shimmering sockeyes.

It was nearly midnight on July 4, and all over the vast Egegik district on the east side of Bristol Bay, the world's largest sockeye salmon run was homeward bound.

Just being there, in the words of drift gillnet fisherman David Harsilla, a veteran of 30 years in the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, "is an awesome experience. The sun is out day and night, and it never stops. You feel tired and you want to sleep, but you keep going. It's a short duration, high intensity, and it doesn't go on forever."

For thousands of years in Southwest Alaska this cycle has repeated itself, with wave after wave of sockeye salmon swimming instinctively toward natal streams to spawn is a promise for renewed sustenance for the Bristol Bay watershed.

En route millions of them are netted, but millions more escape upstream to spawn and sustain the fishery.

While the Alaska Department of Fish and Game annually determines the size of an escapement for each area of the bay, nobody ever knows for sure when the sockeye migration will begin and how big it will be.

Independence Day 2009 brought the second massive pulse of sockeyes into Egegik in barely a week. Fishermen in hundreds of boats trailing thousands of fathoms of drift gillnets harvested 7.4 million reds.

By July 16, the Bristol Bay run had reached nearly 39 million fish, with a cumulative harvest of nearly 30 million reds.

On that moonlit night of July 4, more than a dozen fishing tenders from fish processing companies also were waiting in the Egegik district, ready to receive hundreds of deliveries of the silvery, oil-rich sockeyes.

Within days the processed fish would be transported out of Bristol Bay, heading for markets worldwide, from fancy restaurants where fine wines would accompany the sockeye entrees to backyard barbecues, as well as international food aid programs that purchase canned wild Alaska salmon to feed inhabitants of poverty stricken nations.

Each sockeye salmon was hand-picked from the gillnet, a physically intensive, repetitive task. Soon the decks were lined with fish. Crews moved quickly to get them to the iced holds in the deck.

Aboard one of the drift gillnetters, the F/V Isanotski from Kodiak, crewmembers Jack Maker and Josh White, with captain Shawn Dochtermann, worked quickly, picking hundreds of reds from their 150-fathom driftnet.

Soon their rain gear and boots were sparking in the moonlight, covered with tiny silvery scales that flicked off as the fish were pulled from the nets. Only afterward, when the net was picked clean - a harvest of 3,800 pounds of fish - would they hose down the deck and themselves.

Each fish - some so tangled the netting had to be cut - was carefully removed from the netting and quickly slipped into brailers, big nets in the deck's holds that have been prepared with slush ice to keep the fish in good condition. Crews mend the nets later, after the harvest.

With the reds secured in the iced holds, the drift gillnet was cast out again. Long lines of white floaters marked the scores of nets on the waters, a scene in an endless profusion of fishing boats.

Within 12 hours, all the shimmering sockeyes had been delivered to fishing tenders, which would take them on to processing facilities in Naknek and other processing plants, while fishermen waited to begin the ritual again, as soon as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the next set.

For the crew of the Isanotski, it was proving to be a good week. By noon on July 5, they had harvested several thousand pounds of reds, and captain Dochtermann anticipated the next set could put him over the per boat limit imposed by processors, which were having trouble keeping up with the surge of fish.

But that was OK, he said, because he had the option of assigning his excess harvest to another fisherman who hasn't brought in the day's limit.

By 1 p.m., dozens of boats were jockeying for position, putting out their nets for a second set. Given the steady surge of reds, "it's like plucking grapes, easy picking," Dochtermann said.

The millions of sockeye, chinook, coho, chum and pink salmon harvested in Alaska each year is a provider to the world.

The fish provide millions of meals to people across the globe. The runs provide thousands of jobs for Alaskans and others, and puts millions of dollars in the state economy.

Yet the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery stands out as the largest and most famous of the state's salmon fisheries. It is the lifeblood and the soul of Western Alaska.

"It is really spectacular," said Norm Van Vactor, a veteran of the Bristol Bay fisheries and operations manager this year for Leader Creek Fisheries, a company that has a profit-sharing plan with local fishermen. "Mother Nature really does deliver. That's why so many of us feel so strongly about seeing that this lifestyle gets maintained."