Pale Ale Home Brew

My favorite part of the last tasting lab was not the Wine, but the home brewed beer made by Erik. The beer I sampled was the Pale Ale. It was light, refreshing, and a perfect color. The hops were just right for me as well. The beer actually complemented my array of post luck food perfectly. The quality was excellent and knowing the time put in to crafting this beer made me drink it slowly savoring every sip.

 

Also I had one the other night!! Thanks Erik!

Couscous and Pine Needle Tea?

The tea made by Shani this week was very interesting and pleasing. It included all foraged ingredients and came with warning, ha. Some of the ingredients included: Pine needles, rosemary, and I think bark of some sort. I had a very strong taste of rosemary and it was excellent.

We also enjoyed some couscous with a veggie concoction that I cant quite remember, but found delicious. SO delicious I went back for seconds and alas there was none. Darn! Thank you again for the lovely meal.

Last Seminar/Self Evaluation

As a participant in the Student Originated Study: Commodification and its Alternatives, I pursued a project on the commodification of salmon, with an internship component. The total credits attempted are 12 and I will be breaking the credits into thirds, so 4 credits for the class component, 4 credits for the internship, and 4 credits for the project.

The first 4 credits I pursued included participation in a weekly class, weekly readings, tasting labs, and seminar discussion papers. I completed all seminar papers. Some of my favorite papers included week 2: talking about eating and sexuality, week 3: Tompkins discussed 19th century eating culture and the movement against over indulgence, and week 6: Winona LaDuke’s accounts of working to save salmon and water from pollution. I also prepared a meal for the class on week 4, Sean and I prepared a vegan dish of winter vegetable soup and a wild rice pilaf.

The second 4 credit section is my internship component. I interned with Nisqually River Education Project during their Salmon Toss activity, Water Quality Monitoring, and Student GREEN Congress. As an intern I learned valuable real life experience in a professional setting. I gave presentations to student grades 3rd-12th. In these presentations we talked about the importance of salmon in the ecosystem, the salmon, life-cycle, and why toss salmon. On top of presentations, I would also have regular communications with teachers, volunteers, and other Non-profits. Other projects include: logo contest (designing poster and handling entries), writing press releases, data collection for Water Quality, making graphs of data, and making an Action Video for Climate Change activities. Here is an example from the Internship blog post section: “The decaying salmon bodies will support the trees, young salmon, raccoons, the river, the birds, and other wildlife. This is what we teach the children; we teach them to preserve, restore, and respect the mighty Salmon. We are teaching them the price to pay for the ease of commodification, and the price is high” (Fields Week 2).

The last 4 credits, which complete my 12 credits, is the project component. For this I read the book The Tragedy of the Commodity: oceans, fisheries, and aquaculture by Longo, Clausen, and Clark, and explored salmon commodification. In my WordPress I created a web page specifically for this topic. Here are some of example of the writings: “When it comes to reform in fish management, we have to reform the social barriers, and the economic barriers. We need to bring communities back together and untie our hands from the shackles of the state run social systems. The biggest solution (that I see) is stopping worker exploration in the food system (and most industries), give those workers the production management, allow workers to decided how surplus is distributed, and stop using our natural world for the base of all commodities. The political barriers to these changes are possible. The impossibility is the recovery of our earth from the point of no return. No earth=no humanity” (Fields week 9), “ITQ’s further the ecological instability of fish species, by reducing them to a single transaction that can be cashed in at any time. It does not take into consideration that fish populations are better fished at certain periods of the year, or that there need to closed seasons for rest and re-population. ITQ’s also favor some fishers over others and does not create an equitable system” (Fields Week 5), and “Salmon are in a fast decline. The Chinook and Steelhead Salmon of the Nisqually River Stocks are already considered a Threatened Species, with only around 600 Wild Chinook salmon returning every year. My goal with this post and with this project moving forward is looking into the past and present systems of fisheries management. As you can see we have entered the Rabbit Hole, our next step is down” (Fields Week 3). Though these blog post and my interview with a harvest biologist, I learned the truth of how fisheries are managed and what needs to change. The number change is the change to our economic system, moving away from Capitalism and away from exploitation.

The Tragedy of the Commodity

“Commodities had long existed and people exchanged them in various ways in previous social systems. But the social changes that were ushered in with the arrival, growth, and spread of capitalist production moved societies toward what sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein call ‘the commodification of everything’” (Longo, Clausen, and Clark 146).

This is never more true than in the fishing industry today. Where not only are the species caught commodities,  but the very act of fishing is a commodity. You can buy and sell fishing trips, you can buy and sell fishing quota, boats, and gear.

It is not a surprise that fisheries management is not the tragedy of the commons, but of the commodity,  for anything existing in the Capitalist socioeconomic system is prey to commodification. “The tragedy of the commodity arose with the emergence of capitalist development. As a growth-dependent economic system, capitalism pursues endless accumulation. Thus, it reproduces itself on an ever-larger scale” (Longo, Clausen, and Clark 175). We can clearly see the issue here. As the industry pursues that growth, their catch grows and grows until stocks can no longer sustain themselves. When that happens fishing stops and the industry crumbles in on itself, or they seek out farmed fish another byproduct of commodification.

If the problem is the social structure and system put in place, how can we change our fishing management before the salmon are gone? Before all that is left are farmed fish and failing ecosystems?

Maybe the answer isn’t in the hard science of the fisheries, maybe the answer lies within our relationships to each other, and to our environments.

To understand the answer, we first have to realize that no answer is universal, and in fact there may be many answers to this question. Each ecosystem requires different moving parts and solutions will be a response to those missing or damaged parts.

Some answers presented by Longo, Clausen, and Clark include:

  • “Transcending the Tragedy of the Commodity” (178). We need a deep and lasting socioeconomic change, moving away from Capitalism and Globalization (in some regards). This includes severing ties with the political agenda’s present in today’s world, and pursuing a different narrative. We also need a consumer movement; in which you do not consume or buy fish products that aren’t sustainable or near you.
  • “Forging the Future and Mending the Rifts” (188). Community Management and moving away from state control. When individual communities are given direct control over economies and ecological planning they can create a more just system. Not just political democracy but also economic democracy. Those who produce surplus must also decide how to distribute surplus. Workers must be in control of production in food systems, not small groups of individuals where the power is concentrate. The bottom line is having de-centralized power and give power back to all the players who participate in the resource.
  • “Beyond Capital: A Resilient, Sustainable, and Just Social Metabolic Order” (198). We do not need to return to the past but there are some lessons from those past civilizations that we can learn today. Capitalism is not rooted in stone, in fact it’s easier to change a political impossibility (capitalism) than a biophysical impossibility (pollution killing us). WE cannot replace Capitalism with another form of nature and labor exploration.

When it comes to reform in fish management, we have to reform the social barriers, and the economic barriers. We need to bring communities back together and untie our hands from the shackles of the state run social systems.

The biggest solution (that I see) is stopping worker exploration in the food system (and most industries), give those workers the production management, allow workers to decided how surplus is distributed, and stop using our natural world for the base of all commodities.

The political barriers to these changes are possible. The impossibility is the recovery of our earth from the point of no return. No earth=no humanity.

Last/First Tea Tasting

I was very fortunate this week to attend the tea tasting. Although I am not a tea drinker and only really consume it when I’m feeling sick; the tea we tasted was good (still not a tea drinker) but the experience the teas gave me was the real highlight.

The tea which gave me the most vivd flashbacks was the tea with roasted rice. Maybe it was the rice, or the rice/tea combo but the flavor transported me back to Bali.

I could smell the musky heat, I could see the mountains, I could hear the jungle noises. The memory was almost unbearable, for I long to be there again. Tea can be transformative and maybe the taste of the tea isn’t the most important quality.

In a world where all food or drink is about the taste, is it possibly for tea to be a transport for our consciousness to a memory or elevated state of being?

The End is Near

My last day for my internship is drawing closer by the day. March 23rd Student GREEN Congress and my final foray in the fantastic universe of Environmental Education in the Nisqually watershed.

So this week for my blog, I’m asking myself what I have learned? What have I gained for these last few months interning?

We shall start with the technical skills I gained though our different projects.

  • WordPress
  • How to Conduct Water Testing including: Dissolved Oxygen, pH, BOD, Nitrates, Fecal Coliform, and Turbidity.
  • How to properly plant a tree and how to teach students to plant a tree.
  • Google Drive Operation.
  • How to make a proper flyer or poster for an event
  • How to write a Press Release

And then we have all the other skills I gained though out my 6 months.

  • Event planning
  • Teaching children of various school age about environmental education.
  • How to Collaborate with a wide range of people on different project.
  • Multi-tasking different projects for different events at the same time.
  • How to reassure teachers when they become stressed about participation in an event.

I am immensely grateful for having this experience. I learned about the Nisqually Watershed and all of the different faucets pouring into it. I gained valuable allies and connections that will propel me forward as I enter the workforce and no longer hold the title of Evergreen Student. My experience is incredibly hard to sum up in just one sitting, but I have fulfilled my learning objective of: To learn how an Environmental Education nonprofit operates. To gain hands on experience in the areas of collaboration with teachers, students, and other nonprofits in the Olympia area.

Mushrooms!!

As I bit into my first mushroom grown by the ever awesome care of Frankie, I knew this was the best mushroom I had ever eaten.

I had the privilege of speaking to Frankie before gathering my food for the meal, and the ultimate appreciation and gratitude goes out to her for providing such a savory dish from her own hard work. The amount of time, supplies, and overall stress that went into fostering the growth of those mushrooms came across in the quality of taste each one of them possessed.

There is a concept I keep coming back to, which is intention of community. It is something I have struggled to maintain these last couple of years, in my move from Kentucky. I left behind literally my entire family. So genuine community has been hard to come by recently.

This may be why I am incredibly thankful for Frankie’s tender care in creating not only a unique perspective on mushrooms, but helping to foster community though service growing/cooking. This week gave me high hopes and a warm heart for community growth.

Childhood Biting

Triggering Passages:

“Trade in canned fruit and other products, such as canned salmon, eventually were discontinued in the 1930s after the markets were deemed “too stable” to be profitable” (Newman 125).

“And yet biting is primarily a violence of childhood: it enacts the desire to destroy the other by consuming her, by obliterating the signs of her existence, or, at the very least, by reducing her physical appearance in the world one mouthful at a time” (Tompkins 171).

News Media Context:

“Trump want to cut EPA funding for Puget Sound by 93 percent”

Programs to clean up major water bodies were hard hit: The Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would also lose more than 90 percent of their EPA funding; cleanup funds for San Francisco Bay and Long Island Sound would be eliminate. www.kuow.org/post/trump-wants-cut-epa-funding-puget-sound-93-percent.

Discussion:

Tompkins passage on acts of violence, in particular, the way violence presents itself in eating culture is incredibly vivid. Especially in the way that biting is a childhood form of violence, we have to be taught and reinforced as children to not bite others; biting also seems to be an act of violence which crosses cultural lines and exhibits itself in almost all children.

The most triggering part of this passage is the end of the sentence when Tompkins says “by reducing her physical appearance in the world one mouthful at a time” (171), what a powerful message about eating culture and how whiteness seeks out otherness. If whiteness cannot kill otherness outright, it will slowly over time, one bite at a time do its best to obliviate it from the world.

The idea of canned salmon being too stable for markets is a concept I find very hard to rectify. I wonder if this is true today, when salmon are struggling to spawn, with little left over to fish, this could create and does create a very violent market. It brings me back to this concept of whiteness seeking to destroy the other and no market is a better example than the salmon market; when the very idea of ‘too stable’ would be laughable to the Native/Non-Native hoping to catch their winter food.

Both of these concepts now exhibit themselves in this proposed budget for the Puget Sound Region, or should I say the non-existent budget. Donald Trump wants the Puget Sound to be forgotten, possibly because the Otherness of the region is not in accord with his white agenda? This was a tough blow for Nisqually River Education Project (my internship) and other agencies working within the Nisqually Watershed. We, as organization, depend on EPA funding to provide some of our funding. Our work deals with environmental conservation, habitat restoration, salmon protections, treaty rights, and so many other issues is at the edge holding on waiting for the push that plummets us to our death or the rope that drags us back to steady ground.

 Works Citied

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print

Ryan, John. “Trump wants to cut EPA funding for Puget Sound by 93 percent”.KUOW. March 3 2017: Page (1). www.kuow.org. Web. March 5 2017.

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

Interview with a Harvest Biologist

This week’s blog entry will be featuring Craig Smith the Harvest Program Manager with the Nisqually Indian Tribe. Craig is focused on conservation efforts, specifically on how to conserve Nisqually Salmon while also exercising treaty rights to fish. This blog will be question and answer style, with a few comments by me throughout.

 

What is the nature of your work?

I am the Harvest Program Manager for the Nisqually Indian Tribe protecting the Nisqually Tribe’s treaty fishing right. I am the technical liaison between the State, Tribe, and Federal Government. I help to ensure sufficient fish return to the terminal area, to fulfill our treaty rights and escapement needs. I manage our in river Treaty Fishery to assure escapement to hatcheries and the spawning grounds depending on species and management intent (lots of catch, hatchery, and escapement data analyzed to create computer models). Some stocks are considered hatchery management stocks, some are hatchery and wild, and some are wild only. Listed fish take precedence in management (i.e. Chinook and Steelhead).

What do you love most about your job?

I love the Nisqually River. I grew up in the Olympic Peninsula where habitats and rivers are mostly in really good shape. The Puget Sound is a habitat nightmare and the golden child is the Nisqually Watershed due to my predecessor’s forethought and determination to bring all parties together to work towards habitat restoration. I love steelhead spawning ground surveys. The smell of cottonwood, the chorus of the river, birds singing in the spring, the chrome bright steelhead and redds illuminated by sun under massive fallen trees creates a euphoric nature party. It is medicine.

What is the hardest part about working in your career?

Salmon provoke unimaginable emotions in massive amounts of people from all walks of life. Wild opinions (meaning wild salmon) are rampant and a product of these emotions, not educated opinions. As a person that is technical in nature, I work very hard to work with what we know and what we don’t know about the resource. I often am confronted by someone who knows more than me on how to do my job. I always ask them what they do for a living. Let’s say it is driving a Dump Truck. I ask them, “Do you think I could negotiate the specificities of operating a Dump Truck better than you?” Everyone “knows” something about salmon.

There are few people that tell me thanks for what I do for the resource. Resource Managers usually are not viewed as helping the fishermen, because they use science to perpetuate runs for the future. Very few fishermen want to hear they cannot fish.

 

**As someone who has also worked with the fishing population this is very true. Everyone believes they can do your job better, without realizing all the working components of fish management.

 

Do you know about the Tragedy of the Commons approach to management?

Yes

What are your thoughts about it?

Salmon are a food source. Salmon are managed and could be managed better. Not managing with the best available data and/or letting money counter sound management produces Tragedy of the Commons. However, on the flip side, if Salmon are not managed as a food source it neglects to become a resource, and when that happens it becomes a silent Tragedy of the Commons. Habitat continues to decline because no one cares.

If not what do you believe is the best way to manage fisheries?

In the river plain and simple. Pre terminal fisheries produce a fine product but are not sustainable.

**pre-terminal areas are those areas fished in the ocean, where all salmon stocks are mixed, fishing in the river allows for more selective fisheries, where you can fish healthy stocks, without hurting stocks that are weak. Here is a good short video by the Northwest Treaty Tribes that explains terminal and tribal fishing. 

What is the state of salmon on the Nisqually River?

This is a loaded question. Chinook, Coho, Pink, Chum, and Steelhead. A book could be written on this.

**yes a book could be written on the subject, I know right now Chinook and Steelhead are threatened status.

What are some hot issues surrounding salmon currently?

What are we going to do with climate change and 2.5 million more people that are headed to the region? Rampant habitat destruction.

How is habitat restoration progressing on the Nisqually? Good, bad, stagnant?

Fantastic. More on the way, however no one can prepare enough for glaciers being gone and sea level rise.

**Habitat restoration is an ongoing process, that includes tree planting engineering log jams, re-meandering stream or tributaries that run in to the Nisqually, acquiring land so that restoration can happen and so that the land can be managed.

What are some core values that contradict each other about salmon fishing vs. salmon protection?

Not understanding how pre-terminal fisheries impact salmon. Pre terminal fisheries disrupt the natural maturation and force smaller fish to the terminal areas. Mark Selective Fisheries are supposed to harvest the first legal fish. However, many fisheries and especially winter season derby fisheries encourage the largest fish so people release fish that are small. Because you are not seeing a dead fish when caught, managers have to provide a model with assumptions. Assumptions often become accepted over time when they are not testable or managers are unwilling to test because of cost or other reasons.

*Mark Selective Fisheries is a term used in fishing and management. It’s a tool where only marked hatchery fish can be retained. Hatcheries will mark fish usually by clipping the Adipose Fin, although other methods are used. 

Are fisheries sustainable?

Depends upon which fisheries you are talking about. Some are some are not. For example Chambers, Minter, and Tumwater Chinook hatchery programs are sustainable in the sense that they are not a wild stock, they never had Chinook in these areas, and fisheries on these stocks are only managed to make sure the hatchery gets enough back to perpetuate the program. These programs are considered “wipe out fisheries/stocks”. However, in a non-direct way these programs production are not sustainable because they can prop up pre terminal fisheries on non-wipe out stocks or ESA listed stocks. Also, these productions have competition impacts while rearing in the same places that wild stocks are rearing.

Wild South Sound Chum stock has been commercially fished in the Puget Sound by Treaty and Non treaty for 60 to 70 years; catching hundreds of thousands of Chum every year. Very little sport fishing is directed on this stock. The Commercial fishery has been managed very well with catch and test fishery and In Season Update (ISU) models discussed weekly by treaty and none treaty managers. Commercial fisheries are much easier to manage because there is a solid known impact, i.e. fish tickets and intensive monitoring. This fishery is almost a terminal fishery in areas 10 and 11. The fish are returning to spawn with known ages and there are minimal non-target species mortalities.

Pre terminal fisheries are not sustainable. Multiple non-target species (beyond just salmon) and ages are “encountered” and true impact to any one stock is impossible to determine.

In your opinion how can we better restore salmon?

Return management to the rivers.

Find a more sustainable source for power than hydroelectric. Evaporate cement, pollution, bulkheads, and bring back herring populations.

 

Or what steps need to happen in order to better protect salmon?

Revamp science around hatchery practices. Understand ecosystem changes that happen from our management and environmental changes. I.e. artificial production changing food web – increasing sea mammal population beyond natural capacity. Manage fisheries in the extreme terminal areas.

**Sea mammal population rise has had an enormous impact on salmon. The big issue today is the protection status of sea lions. Should they be protected now that their numbers are strong or continue to protect them?