Eat, Sleep, Fish, Click

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Near the mouth of the Kvichak River in southwestern Alaska, there is a knob of tundra reaching into the water that locals call Graveyard Point. Atop a small bluff lie the dilapidated remains of an abandoned fish cannery, and below is a vast, swampy delta.

Every summer the remote camp fills with fishermen - and a few fisherwomen - who come to seek their fortunes in the waters of Bristol Bay, home to one of the largest runs of sockeye salmon in the world. Among them is Corey Arnold, a native Californian who runs a wild salmon netting operation from two small skiffs in the bay. Like others at Graveyard Point, Mr. Arnold is drawn by the promise of wilderness adventure, the challenge of making a living from what he can haul out of the sea, and the pleasure of chasing a legendary fish.

Unlike most others, he is also there to take pictures.

Mr. Arnold, 36, is a fisherman, photographer and a photographer of fishermen. He was 2 when his father first took him fishing. From then on, they spent weekends angling for shark and tuna off the coast of Southern California. Like his father, Mr. Arnold became obsessed with the ocean. He took sea creatures to school for show-and-tell and dressed as a fisherman for Halloween for ye! ars in a row.

“When I grow up I want to be a professional fisherman,” Mr. Arnold told anyone who asked.

When he was 10, his father gave him a camera. Mr. Arnold took pictures casually at first and later studied photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

But during the summers, he fished. After driving to Alaska in 1995, Mr. Arnold walked the docks of a harbor in the Kenai Peninsula and landed a job salmon fishing in Bristol Bay. He returned summer after summer until the dot-com crash, when photo assignments grew scarce, and he went looking for fish work in winter.

That was when he became a deckhand on a king crab boat in the Bering Sea.

“Life on a crab boat is pretty jarring for the first time,” Mr. Arnold said. “We work 20-hour days on average and get four hours of sleep or so. It’s hard to know if you’re getting in really good shape or completely destroying your body. You’re super remote and it’s cld. It’s a whole other world of big boats, a lot of noise and hydraulics, and 800-pound crab pots slamming on deck.”

Corey Arnold A Bering Sea crab fisherman with a king crab.

Despite the subzero temperatures, backbreaking work and lashing seas, Mr. Arnold began taking pictures. “I would run in and have my cameras on the bed, loaded with film, with Ziploc bags duct-taped to the lens hood,” he said. “I’d run out, shoot a roll or two, then run back in, throw them on the bed, throw my gloves on and get back out.”

Two years after Mr. Arnold began working - and shooting - aboard the Rollo, camera crews from the Discovery Channel arrived in Dutch Harbor to film the reality television show “Deadliest Catch.” At first, Mr. Arnold worried that ! the progr! am might spoil his project. Then he took some pictures for the show - one ran on a billboard in Times Square - and his work was catapulted into the public eye.

After seven winters at sea, Mr. Arnold quit crabbing. He published a book, “Fish-Work: The Bering Sea,” and began exhibiting his photos in galleries. He shot editorial assignments for magazines and was commissioned to photograph fisheries across Europe. Mr. Arnold is represented by Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland, Ore., and Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif.

In 2008, Outside magazine sent Mr. Arnold to Alaska to take pictures for an article about Pebble Mine, a proposal to tap a vast gold, copper and molybdenum deposit that opponets fear could destroy Bristol Bay. That was when he discovered Graveyard Point. Fishing on the Kvichak River was just starting to pick up after a long decline, and he could not resist. He bought two commercial fishing permits and two small boats, hired three crew members and set up shop in a ramshackle loft onshore.

“It’s a way more romantic kind of fishing,” Mr. Arnold said. “You get in really good shape â€" there’s no hydraulics, we’re just pulling in nets by hand â€" and it’s quiet.”

Mr. Arnold began photographing again. His new series, “Graveyard Point,” deals less with the mechanics of fishing and more with the people who do it. There are urbanites from Brooklyn, Mormons from Idaho and Alaska Natives, he said. “It’s a crazy melting pot of people.”

For the most part, a casual camaraderie exists among the 100 or so fishermen who gather at Graveyard Point. But as the season drags on and sleep beco! mes scarc! e, a kind of mind-altering madness sets in and the never-ending cycle - eat, sleep, fish - can take a toll.

Corey Arnold Fishermen walking below an abandoned cannery near the mouth of the Kvichak River in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

As a boat captain, it can be hard to find time to shoot photographs, Mr. Arnold said. He doesn’t consider himself a documentary photographer. “The ultimate goal for me is to take documentary subjects and push them in a way, or play with things in a way, that opens up new ideas about a place that might not necessarily be real but still gives you some insight about the mentality there,” he said.

Like the picture he took of a salmon’s lone tail fin slicing through the water (Slide 1). “There’s something really ominous about Graveard Point,” he said. “It almost feels haunted. If you haven’t talked to them, the people there look super grizzly. They’re coming from all walks of life and everyone is carrying guns. The ominous shark feeling and the texture of the water fit the whole feel that I’m trying to go for when describing Graveyard Point.”

Mr. Arnold stages photographs on occasion. “I think sometimes the feeling you can get from a staged photo can say a lot about the reality of a place,” he said. “It’s not necessarily a lie, it’s just getting the viewer to have a feel for what you’re creating. I’m not afraid to lie a little bit sometimes.”

On the other hand, given his concerns for the future of his adopted fishery, Mr. Arnold also thinks of his work as part historical archive. “The Kvichak and the Nushagak are the two rivers that could possibly be damaged by Pebble Mine,” he said. “It’s a major threat to Graveyard Point. This is a community that might not exist in the future i! f the sal! mon run is poisoned.”

Both his passions have challenges.

“Fishing comes a lot easier to me than photography,” Mr. Arnold said. “The mental stress of trying to be creative all the time is pretty taxing. Fishing is massive physical stress. But being a captain, running a boat and making it all work â€" it just comes to me instantly.”

Corey Arnold Eric Nyhammer and Matthew Sullivan sort Opilio crab aboard the Rollo during a cold storm in the Bering Sea.

A photograph of Mr. Arnold’s is currently on display at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Follow @coreyfishes and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.