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A 10am on August 22, 1993, fishermen Rick Steiner steers his 50-year-old wooden fishing boat,

the Blue Note, through a heavy fog on Alaska's Prince William Sound.

It's been four and a half years since the Exxon Valdeus ran aground 10 miles away, spilling

11 million gallons of oil into one of the world's finest fishing grounds.

Almost all of that oil is gone now, most of it evaporated for washed out to sea.

Rick takes a deep breath, inhaling the smell of saltwater, and sacked from the spruce trees

tailoring overhead.

If he closes his eyes, he can imagine it's all back to normal.

But everything is not back to normal.

The oil is gone, but so is everything else.

No birds, no porpoises.

Even the plankton that used to give the water its beautiful blue-green hue have disappeared,

and the water his boat chugged through is eerily clear.

The fish are gone too.

The 1993 fishing harvest was a complete disaster.

It was estimated 25 million fish would be brought to market this year, but fishermen caught

only 4 million, less than a fifth of what was anticipated.

The entire Prince William Sound fishing industry is on the brink of collapse, and for Rick,

and the tens of thousands of others, this means financial ruin.

It's also been 4 and a half years since Exxon's head of Alaska operations Don Cornette told

...