Tag Archives: Lummi fishermen
Everyone’s Mad About Fugitive Salmon in the Pacific Northwest!
In a giant refrigerated warehouse 90 miles north of Seattle, 43,500 Atlantic salmon were stacked in plastic crates, frozen pariahs in a kingdom where Pacific salmon rule. For weeks, locals used nets to chase down the intruders, not to eat them or sell them, but to get them out of the water. Native fishermen who’ve worked Puget Sound for decades mocked them for looking different. Chefs and foodies refused to so much as lay a boning knife on them. Scientists, for their part, say they’re perfectly edible — a good source of protein in a world where increasing numbers of people could use some. But nobody is listening. click here to read the story 09:01
Traffic, sun blindness, now eclipse dumps 305,000 Farmed Atlantic salmon near San Juan Islands
It’s open season on (farmed) Atlantic salmon as the public is urged to help mop up a salmon spill from an imploded net holding 305,000 fish at a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm near Cypress Island. Lummi fishers out for chinook on Sunday near Samish, south of Bellingham Bay, were shocked to pull up the spotted, silvery sided Atlantic salmon — escapees that turned up in their nets again Monday. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is urging the public to catch as many of the fish as possible, with no limit on size or number. The fish are about 10 pounds each. No one knows yet how many escaped. But the net had some 3 million pounds of fish in it when it imploded about 4 p.m. Saturday, said Ron Warren, fish program assistant director for the WDFW click here to read the story 15:05
The US Coal Industry Wants to Boost Exports to Asia – Native American Tribes Stand in the Way – Lhaq’temish – People of the Sea
The gray waters of the Puget Sound are rough and scattered with white caps on this cold and wet October morning. The air is pungent with the low-tide smells of seaweed and salt. Schools of chum salmon are migrating from the Pacific into the Nooksack River to spawn. A handful of Lummi fishermen in small weather-beaten boats brave the driving rain and frigid gusts to reel in their nets, harvesting the fish as their ancestors have done for 175 generations… The Lummi have traditionally kept a low profile and declined to get openly involved in the political controversies of their white neighbors. But now tribe members are taking center stage in a fight that they believe is about the very existence of the fish that is so central to their traditional way of life. Coal, LNG, Energy exports. Read more
