Reefnet Fishing Sustainabilty on the Salish Sea Story and Photos by Nick Belcaster
I
n the spring of 1984, a team of scuba divers and archeology students assembled on the rough cobble beach of Legoe Bay, located on the shores of Lummi Island in the Salish Sea. They were not there to search out the sunken remains of a ship but rather to investigate stories that had been told on this island long before any of them were born. A story about stones. Beneath the surface, they found what they were looking for: irregular stones, unlike those that usually covered the seafloor in this area, often angular, all of a similar size, and in a pattern readily recognizable as ancient anchor stones, traditionally used in reefnet fishing, proving that reefnetting at Watching and Waiting Legoe Bay had been going on for a long time. Exclusive to the Salish Sea, reefnetting, a subsistence style of salmon fishing invented by the Coast Salish tribes that call the region home, has existed for at least 1,800 years. Unlike tribes living at the mouths of great rivers where salmon consistently returned each fall, the people of the straits used reefnetting to intercept Fraser River salmon as they made their 34
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long end-run around Vancouver Island northward toward their natal rivers. Traditionally, their nets were woven from willow bark and secured to anchor stones by heavy lines made of cedar, then suspended between two canoes creating an artificial reef that would entice salmon to the surface. In this way, native fishermen were able to stockpile sufficient amounts of fish to last until the salmon returned.
Historically practiced throughout the San Juan archipelago, today reefnetting takes place in only a handful of bays. A passive fishing method, unique among the schemes humans have dreamt up for acquiring finfish, it requires no lures, hooks, or spears. Salmon are simply lofted from the sea in the upturned palm of a net, which is why reefnetting today is one of the most sustainable fishing methods in the world. Non-targeted species are plucked from the live wells and tossed
back, earning reefnetting a by-catch rate of less than one percent. Today, onboard winches are powered using solar energy, and barges are stationary, meaning no fossil fuels are burned chasing fish. It’s not a fishery that has rid itself of all the problematic trappings of modern fishing; it’s a technique that simply never had them. And, it may be our best hope to save our salmon. The call finally came on a Thursday. “Well, looks like they’re giving us a day to fish. We’ll see you on the beach, just wave and we’ll collect you.” The speaker was Ian Kirouac, president of the seafood collective Lummi Island Wild. I was to be given a closeup look at the art of reefnetting. Today, Legoe Bay is one of the only locations where a reefnet season still occurs en masse, albeit with modernized equipment, and on the late August day that I arrived by skiff, Kirouac was perched high on an elevated platform above Rosario Strait, knuckles wrapped around the rail. As the ‘spotter,’ his is a simple job: find the fish. His eyes scan the sea with the gleam of a hunter-gatherer. Down on the deck below, there’s a commotion, where some undercurrent of >>> Go to
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