We report on the generation of dark solitons in an all normal dispersion ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) laser with a fundamental repetition rate of 293.1 MHz based on nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) saturable absorber (SA). The mode-locked fiber laser generates dark pulse with a center wavelength of 1037 nm, a 3-dB bandwidth of 4 nm, an output power of 4.5 mW, and the signal to noise ratio up to 33 dB. The demonstration of mode-locking operation with high fundamental repetition rate indicates that NPR based SA in normal dispersion cavity can be an effective technique to generate dark solitons for the optical communication applications. © 2018 Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.