by Martin Fournier
Based on a presentation at the Georgia Strait Puget Sound Research Conference, April 2003
According to palaeontologists and native oral traditions, humans have been fishing in the Puget Sound and Georgia Basin waters for at least 8,200 years. When Europeans showed up in the bays and estuaries of the West Coast 200 somewhat years ago, fish were teeming so much that they probably slowed the ships. What the Europeans didn’t know is that this seemingly naturally abundant state of affairs had a human hand behind it. For thousands of years Coast Salish people fished approximately on the same industrial scale as we do now, but they knew how tokeep the salmon returning for more. Using a technology called sqwélax or reef netting, the Coast Salish caught between 5,000 and 10,000 salmon at a time.
Tens of thousands of people were involved in the salmon trade. Salmon was the central commodity, the lifeline of the Coast Salish. It was used in feasting, it was smoked and preserved, and it was traded with tribes in the interior for goods like hides and herbs.
One presenter at the Georgia Strait/Puget Sound Research Conference in Vancouver last April was Russel Barsh, Director of the Center for the Study of Coast Salish Environments. Barsh has studied the Coast Salish fishing methods to see why their yield was sustainable year after year.
His research has revealed that the Coast Salish burned entire shorelines of estuaries on a regular basis, “loading” the estuary and bay with carbon, ionic nitrogen, and phosphorus. Normally this ‘loading” would have resulted in harmful algal blooms (HABs) that turn the surface water red from the overabundance, hence often referred to as red tides. During a red tide a small number of algae species produce potent neurotoxins that can be transferred through the food web where they affect and even kill the higher forms of life such as zooplankton, shellfish, fish, birds, marine mammals, and humans that feed either directly or indirectly on them. The Coast Salish seemed to know how to anticipate HABs and kept them under control.
Russel has three hypotheses regarding red tides and the Coast Salish fishing “management” methods. Either the Coast Salish maintained nutrient loading of bays below the trigger point for HABs, continued to fish and nutrify bays until HABs forced them to relocate, or they made an effort to prevent triggering HABs but seldom failed.
When effective, the loading of the bays likely promoted the growth of crustaceans and “forage fish” such as sand lance, which are preferred prey for Pacific salmon, in turn increasing the number of salmon. The disposal of dead salmon carcasses was another method to keep salmon populations high as the young fed on the remains and the bones added nutrients to the ecosystem.
The Coast Salish also left baffles (old decaying wooden quays) to rot, behind which vegetations grew, serving as the ideal spawning ground for returning salmon. Another benefit of human meddling in salmon population dynamics is that this “loading” served as a driver for genetic changes which increased the adaptation rate and the number of genotypes (genetic variety in the genetic pool of the entire salmon population).
Barsh is uncovering more research, which may show that herring stocks, one of the favourite salmon prey, and seals also benefi ted from this form of management. The Coast Salish had a simpler more intuitive knowledge than our current “sci- entifi c-industrial” methods. This stemmed from the direct connectivity they felt and nurtured with the water that nourished them. They understood that they had to give something back to keep everything in balance.
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Russel Barsh fi rst studied “hu- man ecology” at Harvard. In 1982 the Mi’kmaq elders asked him to help organize an advocacy program for indigenous peoples at the UN. After 1993, he taught and did research on ecosystems and traditional knowl- edge in Blackfoot territory (Alberta and Montana), and fi nally, with a great sigh of relief, found his way back home to the Pacifi c Northwest doing what he loves the most: fi eld- work in human ecology. Contact Russel L. Barsh Center for the Study of Coast Salish Environments, Samish Indian Nation, PO Box 217, Anacortes, WA 98221 rbarsh@samishtribe.nsn.us
[From WS November/December 2003]