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| Reefnet fishermen Off Squaw Bay, Shaw Island, center of the San Juan archipelago, WA. 1983 Photo courtesy of gear No. 7 owners, Ed and Kathy Hopkins. click image to enlarge. |
Few onlookers, if they don't live here, are aware they are watching one of the oldest methods of catching salmon known to man, a method said to have originated with the Lummi Native Americans just north of the San Juan Islands in Whatcom County.
This is the only place in the world you'll see reefnet fishing. Here in the San Juans it's done by the white man who adopted the technique from the Native Americans. Around Lummi Island, both Indian and white fishermen set reefnet gear. Their boats and barges with outside towers are connected by nets with floats punctuating the rippled surface.
Most of the local reefnet gear has been brought in for the winter now, and we shall miss the 'set' that stood off the point a short distance from our waterfront deck. On a couple of occasions, we have managed to wheedle a salmon from the fishermen who spent daylight hours atop those towers watching for a run of fish headed north to spawn. We were close enough to hear the jubilant shouts ' Here they come!' and to watch the nimble tower-riders swoop down to hoist nets aboard, a couple of dozen salmon dancing shimmering silver in the sunlight.
Some of the young people on our island have chosen to fish in this relatively primitive fashion and we silently cheered them on with each 'pull.' the season is short. This year they were not allowed to fish as often as usual. We suspect they may not have had enough to pay for the expensive nets, but these are the same people who push for conservation.
Reefnetting carries with it an aura of native mystique. Reefnetters traditionally do not talk about what they do and discourage people from coming along to observe or photograph the operations. For one thing, there isn't much room in the narrow boats with their flared gunwales. Extra bodies are in the way and not at all welcome.
Until this summer nobody had put this strangely intriguing harvest on film. But now comes an extremely determined graduate of Evergreen State College in Olympia who earned his degree by producing an extraordinary half-hour documentary entitled Salt Water People.
Scott Miller, who never had written a grant proposal in his young life, spent four months at it. After observing that it was the best grant writing they'd seen, the Youth Grants program of the National Endowments for the Humanities awarded Miller nearly $10,000 to record this oldest of fishing arts in Northwest waters.
That was three years ago. With Sid White of Evergreen art department as his faculty sponsor, Miller and his friend Peter Alkins produced a film that earned Miller full credit on a two-year individual contract. In the process, he spent all of the grant money plus $2,000 of his own money, lived on crunchy granola, bartered salmon in the county park campground on Shaw, and wore out his old station wagon. Evergreen supplied the technical equipment and local islanders cooperated in several ways. Miller's wife, Lisa, is an accomplished professional potter and Miller tells you frequently about the pottery sales and encouragement that kept him going.
Salt Water People was a difficult film to make, partly because of the salt water people themselves. But Miller had good credentials. Several years ago he had fished with a well known Shaw Island reefnetter. That friendship was invaluable in overcoming innate suspicion and talking himself aboard some of the reefnet boats. He also spent arduous months making quiet contacts among the Lummi, finally persuading one venerable tribal elder to talk about the legend and lore of reefnetting among her people. It was only a few days before the final editing that he even got permission to use some color stills of the Native woman.
The film is a head-on confrontation with the state of art as practiced today. Miller wisely eschewed the obvious, and probably tempting, archeological dig in favor of quiet narrative; the elderly Native woman, white reefnetters on Lummi, Shaw, and Lopez, who have run gear for many years, and finally a young Shaw Island couple who set gear within sight of their beachfront home.
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| L-R: Ed Hopkins, Doug Fawcett, Kathi Melville, Doug Baier, Roger Melville, Shaw Island reefnet fishermen waiting for the tide. Gear No. 7. Photo courtesy of Ed & Kathy Hopkins. |
It may look romantic from the deck of a ferry, but reefnetting is hard labor, complicated by strong currents that constantly foul gear which must be kept clear of kelp and flotsam. Reefnetters stand atop their towers in the blazing sun and in summer storms that can build up waves steep enough to toss the towers in sweeping arcs nearly down to the water. They can't quit on a fishing day, regardless of weather. Those days are too few.
There is considerable footage of the competing fishing fleets that pave the Strait of Juan de Juca during the fishing season. Yet there is little bitterness in the voices and wonderfully weatherbeaten faces of the reefnetters. It's an art, a way of life, a love affair with a tough lady. They fish the hard way because they want to. One of the reefnet fishermen feels so intensely about it that he has turned some of the farmland into a final resting place for the years-old reefnet boats he finds about the country and up north near Lummi.
Right now Miller is working and trying to find some more money for prints of the film. He is a softspoken, deceptively gentle 26-year-old who began his college career on a football scholarship at Colorado State. He bagged it, soon after, and if you want to know why, 'My next film may be about the insanity of college football...'
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| Winter Storage Lineo cut block print, 1977 by Rex Brandt, N.A.(1914-2000) former summer resident of Shaw Island, WA. |
Like its producer, Salt Water People is low-keyed and gentle, but it's full of throat-catching qualities that make me think it's an important one. The reefnet fisher may not be among endangered species––yet––but neither is it proliferating. The film tells you about the people who fish and how they do it. These are not the taciturn, grunting deckhands of a corporate commercial fishing vessel, pouring tons of salmon into cavernous holds. These are happy gamblers with nature because reefnetting is a kind of gamble and the reefnet fisherman admires his prey.
Nets are set, lines strung to make the fish think they are approaching a reef. They swerve to avoid it and theoretically will swim right over and into the net. It's a critical moment that requires good timing. Sometimes they get away. In this film, they do get away. A young couple wearily resumes posts on the towers, and the gal excitedly calls across to her husband. 'Wow! I wonder if they feel like I'd feel if I got away!"
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| Photo postcard, nicely composed of a winter haulout scene. Blind Bay, Shaw Island, WA. by Rod Peterson© |
Text by Jo Ann Morse Ridley, for Enetai. 7 Nov. 1979
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The earliest known reference, to date, of reefnetting by non-native fishermen at Shaw Island is recorded by Mr. Errett Graham who moved to the island in 1941 with his wife Helena. Here are two excerpts from his daily diary collection, now archived in the Shaw Island Historical Museum:13 September 1941.
The two fishing boats with their lookouts like posts at the end –– were at their station off the mouth of Squaw Bay –– where they have been for weeks."
And one more quote verbatim from Mr. Graham's diary listing names of the early fishermen:
1 August 1949:
"I canoed out to the first line of reefnet boats shortly before noon this morning and purchased $5 worth of salmon –– 3 Sockeye, 3 Humpies, and 1 Silver. While I was out there some salmon came over the net and I saw for the first time, the process of drawing in the net between two boats, the boats being drawn closer together in the process and flapping fish being finally spilled out into one boat. John Mathisen, Mort Totten, George Clark, some boy, and the boss, Kimple, were manning the nets."
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