Kwiaht offers “Food for Thought,” May 21

— by Russel Barsh —

Kwiaht and the Indian Island Marine Health Observatory invite Orcas islanders to share a salmon barbeque and refreshments at The Barnacle on Sunday, May 21, to consider the role of seafood in a sustainable food system. Doors open at 3:30 pm. The Barnacle will serve cocktails, beer and soft drinks. The theme is “sustainable seafood,” or in the words of the organizers, “we live on islands, so why do we eat like we live in the Midwest?”

“Marine resources are regarded as something to protect, and perhaps to attract tourists, but not as important local food,” says Kwiaht director Russel Barsh. “People harvested fish and shellfish in the islands for thousands of years, enough to export as well as feed themselves, but nowadays the discussion of food sustainability is chiefly about conventional crops and livestock.”

“Of course there are problems,” Barsh says. “Our seas are polluted, the cities surrounding the Salish Sea are growing, and many species have been exploited to the edge of extinction. But this does not justify writing off local seafood as a thing of the past.” On the contrary, we need to recognize that the islands cannot approach food security or self-sufficiency without including fish and shellfish on the menu. “We should accept this reality is an incentive to work harder to reduce pollution, give threatened marine species a break, and take greater local control of harvesting,” Barsh adds.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Barsh worked on new approaches to marine management in the Canadian Maritimes as an advisor to Mi’kmaq communities, and researcher for Canadian Royal Commissions and the Canadian Biodiversity Center. “Local control of lobster harvests was one of the success stories,” he says. “Once each village—whether aboriginal, Acadian or Anglo-Canadian –had its own harvesting area and could adopt its own quotas, competitive over-harvesting fell, and lobster stocks rebounded.” Barsh also points to the transferable area quota system in Alaska, and that state’s rules protecting local subsistence harvesting. “Local ownership and control has a good record of conserving fisheries.”

Barsh also notes that the reef-net salmon fishery, a technology first developed by Native people in the islands almost two thousand years ago, was based on local ownership and sharing the harvest with local crews. “Once state laws made it possible for anyone with money to build a fish trap or buy a bigger boat, salmon stocks went into a sharp decline.”

You can join the discussion of the future of seafood while you enjoy the salmon barbecue at The Barnacle on May 21. Admission free. No-host bar.