This is a short movie about abundance: a dozen pounds of salmon for a dime, teenagers buying jalopies with cash from digging clams, charter boats hauling in hundreds of fish.
Just a generation ago, such was the scene on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the people in “Voices of the Strait” have lived to tell about it.
The documentary film, though it lasts a mere 16 minutes, has the goods to drive a new conversation about restoring the body of water that sustains the North Olympic Peninsula.
This summer, “Voices of the Strait” will have six free showings along with another short film featuring scuba divers who’ve likewise seen the Strait change before their eyes. That six-minute movie was made by Cameron Little, a 2010 graduate of Port Angeles High School.
It “really shows off the natural beauty of the area,” Little said, adding that the divers’ stories are “amazing.”
“Voices of the Strait,” made by Al Bergstein of Mountainstone Productions in Port Townsend, brings together elders — tribal and white — from Sekiu to Sequim, and from Neah Bay to Discovery Bay.
Hopes for healing
In vivid conversations, they share their experiences crabbing, clamming and fishing local waters, and they share their hopes for healing. Their interviewer is Betsy Wharton, a board member of the Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles (www.feiromarinelifecenter.org) and former deputy mayor of Port Angeles. Through fliers, news releases and word of mouth, she sought out the longtime residents — not the politicians — who tell the Strait story.
Among them: Dick Goin, a retired Port Angeles millworker and his wife Marie; retired charter boat captain Herb Balch, who fished at Sekiu for three decades; Edith Hottowe of Neah Bay, whose beach was both playground and dinner-gathering spot; and Jamestown S’Klallam elder Marlin Holden, who ends the movie with an observation about problem-solving.
The elders are hopeful yet pragmatic, Wharton said.
Elwha River
Dick Goin, for one, speaks about the giant Elwha River restoration project to begin next year. Removal of the river’s two dams is aimed at restoring a whole ecosystem, where salmon once thrived, and where the big runs provided for the web of life around them.
After the dams are gone, “it won’t go back to where it was,” Goin says. “But it will be ever so much better than it is. . . . I have great hopes for [the] Elwha.”
Goin spent 42 years working at the Rayonier pulp mill, but “the mill was down a lot,” his wife remembers.
So when Goin went fishing or hunting, it wasn’t for sport. What he brought home was what they lived on, Marie says.
Balch, in contrast, talks about taking charter boats out of Sekiu, once the north Peninsula’s premium fishing spot.
“My main concern was that the limits were too high” for the ecosystem to stay healthy, he says. A boatload of sport fishermen could haul in hundreds of fish that they didn’t need and couldn’t use. But the sportsmen did it anyway because they could.
Bob Bowlby of Clallam Bay, who appears in the movie with his wife, June, adds that no single entity can be blamed for the loss of healthy fisheries here.
Healing “is going to have to be a cooperative effort” by commercial, sport and tribal fishermen, Bowlby says.
“The strongest impression of the final product on me was the way the story unveiled itself . . . as the interviews progressed,” said filmmaker Bergstein.
“What we expected was very different than what we got, which was a very strong conservation ethic by all who lived here. These people are from very different walks of life, but they all were impacted greatly by the abundance in the early days, and later by our loss of it.
“They all want to see it restored,” he said.
$11,500 grant
“Voices of the Strait” and Little’s film were funded by an $11,500 grant from the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency formed to rebuild the health of the sound, in large part through showing the people of this region how all waterways are connected. Information is plentiful at www.pugetsoundstartshere.org.
“Every new group of people who move here has a different baseline, in terms of what they experience,” said John Cambalik, the partnership’s liaison for the Strait of Juan de Fuca area.
“The value of [‘Voices’] is that it reminds us that there are baselines from the past. . . . We rely on our elders to remember what this beautiful place used to be like.”
The Strait stretches from Cape Flattery in Neah Bay to Point Wilson in Port Townsend, but Cambalik noted that it’s part of an even larger picture, “from the tops of the mountains to the deep water.”
“Voices” and Little’s film about diving the Strait will screen at the following times and venues:
• 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sekiu Community Center, 42 Rice St.
• 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Center, Room 13, 1666 Lower Elwha Road
• 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 24, Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.
• 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 25, Sequim Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
• 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 26, Port Townsend Marine Science Center, Fort Worden State Park.
• 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, Makah Community Hall, Neah Bay.
• 7 p.m. Oct. 20, Crescent Grange, 507634 state Highway 112, Joyce, following a 6:30 p.m. potluck.
Admission to all screenings is free, and audiences are invited to stay for refreshments and a discussion.
For more information, phone the Feiro Marine Life Center at 360-417-6254 or visit the center on the Port Angeles City Pier at 315 N. Lincoln St. The Feiro is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.