Dan Earle was interviewed by Anjuli Grantham on August 1, 2015, at Bird Rock, Uyak Bay, Kodiak, Alaska, as part of the Kodiak Historical Society’s West Side Stories project. Dan Earle was born in 1946 in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Alaska in 1969. ​He reflects on the allure of living in an unspoiled nature in the wake of the back-to-land movement of the time, and details his early work experiences, including being a winter watchman, and working in the local canneries, New England Fish Company, and Wakefields. He describes the mix of Native and Scandinavian families and other characters living in the area, the welcoming and supportive community and the self-sufficiency that living in the area required, and his discomfort with the common segregation of Filipino workers in the cannery working environment. He and his wife Sandy began setnetting in Larsen Bay in the early 1970s, learning from the fishermen whose sites they worked on, both loving the independent lifestyle of a fisherman. He describes the gear they used, including fashioning their own anchors called kellicks, and using locally-made equipment like the Jake Laktonen skiff. He describes the relationship that he and other fishermen had with the cannery and the tenders that were used to transport fish to shore, and his feelings about the common attitudes to fishing regulations. He also mentions the positive impacts and stability of ownership that limited entry had for his generation of fishermen, his experiences of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and his current concern for the status of some local fish species.