Introduction Lisa Price, Oregon State Univeristy, and Nemer Narchi, El Colegio de Michoacán
1. The discovery of the Mar del Sur to unlikely connections between Panama and the United States
Anna Spalding of Oregon State University and M. Eugenia Mellado
This chapter is historic in nature and looks at the waters of the Pacific Ocean as they link to Panama, the southernmost country of Central America, with the entire west coast of the united states through a variety of ecosystem-level and oceanographic processes that range from currents to biological exchanges that help us better understand our marine environment and biodiversity. It starts around 1530 and looks at the use of marine space and the cementing of this importance transit route, with the pearl industry being one example of this.
2. Where Shore meets sea: The eroticized landscape in literary tradition of the Pacific Northwest and California
Peter Betjemann, Oregon State University
This contribution is an essay that examines the literary traditions of the PNW and California where writers think about the environment in eroticized terms. Consider John Steinbeck’s depiction of the “exposed rocks” of coastal tide pool: “when the tide goes out… the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals… the smell of powerful protean, smell of sperm and ova fill the air”. The most familiar instance of this pattern, of course is afforded by spawning runs of salmon and steelhead, from Carl Safina's tender account of watching salmon spawn in an Oregon river to the wild intermingling of human and piscine desire in a host of Pacific coast works centered on anadromous fish (from Robinson Jeffers’ narrative poem “Steelhead, Wild Pig, The Fungus” to the novels of Don Berry).
3. Invisible landscapes: perception, heritage, and coastal change in Southern California
Donald Burnette, Jenifer Dugan (UCSB) and Anita Guerrini of Oregon State University
To the public, the Coal Oil Point Reserve, north of Santa Barbara, is an example of a natural environment. Restoration efforts have brought it back to a state sometimes called pristine; even the snowy plovers, long thought vanished for good, have returned to its beaches. In fact, Coal Oil Point is a cultural landscape in which the human element is completely invisible to even interested observers. Far from being untouched, Coal Oil Point has been a human landscape for thousands of years. This essay will examine the “invisibility” of cultural landscapes in the context of human desires for untouched environments.
4. Oysters from tide to table in the Pacific Northwest
Lisa Price, Oregon State University
This chapter examines oyster collection, farming, and consumption with a focus on the Puget Sound in Washington State and the Oregon Coast. It touches upon the various edible species along the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Canada, examines the near extinction of the small oyster of the PNW and the introduction of the current commercial species from Japan (the Pacific Oyster). Also touched upon is the nature of current oyster cultivation businesses, and restoration efforts for the indigenous PNW species. The chapter includes a look at a small number of historic oyster bar restaurants in Portland, Oregon and Olympia/Seattle, Washington that remain from the turn of the last century.
5. Resilient fishing families: adapting to change
Flaxen Conway and Lori Cramer, Oregon State University
This chapter synthesizes over 20 years of interdisciplinary scholarship by the co-authors on fishing families and coastal communities. Amidst the narrative of increasing coastal storms, erosion, and other physical hazards associated with climate and related coastal hazards facing coastal communities are concerns about cultural and social dimensions of community resilience. Fishing families have exhibited their resilience through changing family roles, a graying of the fleet, and never-ending management and resource shifts. This notion of adapting to change has been a thread in our research from one of our first collaborative projects, entitled “Adapting to Change: Fishing Businesses, Families, Communities, and Regions” in 1995 to our current project, “The Old(er) Men of the Sea: Graying of the fishing industry and its impact on local community resiliency.” In our current project, we use oral histories and semi-structured interviews to capture and document intergenerational fishing family perspectives on change and resiliency. This work builds on an earlier project by Co-Author Conway where oral histories of fishing families revealed the changing roles of women as a key theme to the fishing family’s ability to be resilient through changing economic times.
6. Preparing for the really big one: the importance of understanding the local culture of resiliency
Lori A. Cramer, School of Public Policy, College of Liberal Arts and Dan Cox and Haizhong Wang, School of Civil and Construction, Engineering, College of Engineering. Oregon State University
Experts are predicting a major rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone sometime within the next 50 years. When that happens, it will cause an offshore earthquake at a magnitude of up to 9.0. After the ground shakes for about five minutes, a powerful tsunami will strike land. When it comes to tsunamis, minutes matter. Oregon is known for its strong sense of community and grassroots-style initiatives. When the Big One hits, it will take that culture of resiliency to weather through the disaster. This chapter will discuss NOAA/Sea Grant and NSF-funded work by the co-authors related to tsunami evacuation and Oregon preparedness. Our cross-disciplinary research brings together social science with civil engineering to develop likely tsunami scenarios that can be used to inform community members and emergency planners on how to improve evacuation strategies and enhance local community resiliency. A key component to our work is to incorporate the decision-making processes of diverse (and socially vulnerable) people living in or near tsunami inundation zones to inform our scenario efforts. This chapter will focus on the importance of understanding a culture of individual and community-level resiliency and how this information can be used to make a significant contribution to planning in coastal communities, and ultimately save lives.
7. Seri calendar and its implications to diet and health
Guillermo Hernández-Santana,Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México,
Julián Esparza Romero, Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Alimentario
Nemer E. Narchi, El Colegio de Michoacán, A.C.
The development of sedentism and a marked shift in diet have played an important, and most of the times negative, role in changing livelihoods of hunter-gatherer populations who have seen a diachronic increase in infectious and chronic-degenerative diseases, along with higher nutritional deficiencies. In this chapter we make use of oral tradition to reconstruct Seri cultural heritage, namely, Seri calendar knowledge. The modern Seris (Comcaac) are descendants of the southernmost nomadic hunter-gatherer and fishing society of North America, native to the Central Gulf [of California] Region of the Sonoran Desert in western Sonora, Mexico. Traditionally an indigenous group of hunter-gatherers and fishers, the Seri hold extensive knowledge of terrestrial and marine organisms. However, and as part of their transformation towards a sedentary life, their ecological knowledge experiences a process of constant erosion. Our reconstruction of the Seri calendar has allowed us to delve deep into former migration patterns, habits, and livelihoods. We have focused mainly on Seri diet throughout their annual migration in order to reconstruct a proxy of the original Seri diet that we have compared to that described by previous authors, starting with Alfred Kroeber, and with current dietary patterns among modern Seri. We discuss how the erosion of traditional knowledge has negatively impacted Seri diet and health. Lastly, we conclude that by returning to previous dietary patterns there is a chance to push the still enormous Seri biocultural heritage towards resilience.
8. Uprise and collapse of pearl cultures in the Gulf of California
Micheline Cariño, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur & Mario Monteforte, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste
Pearls and nacre have been two of the most price full and largely resources of the Gulf of California from pre-European contact until their exhaustion in the mid-20th century. Throughout this time the cultural relations between societies and pearls varied as much in their perception, as in the ways and means for their extraction. In this chapter we explore the environmental history of pearl and nacre extraction in the Baja California Peninsula from European contact to the XX century. In doing so, we explore the social, economic, and technological aspects of the pearl and nacre industry. The study of the historical evolution of the pearl oyster industry in the Baja California Peninsula allows us to claim that the human-pearl interaction defined an entire culture and way of life still present in the collective identity of South Baja Californians.
9. Transforming fisheries in La Costa Chica de Oaxaca. Fishers, socio-spatial organization, and natural resources
Esteban Andrés Tello, Octavio Montes Vega, El Colegio de Michoacán
This chapter examines the changes in the social and spatial organization of the Afro-descendant fishing community of Corralero, which were key to allow greater control of the strategic resources (namely marine) out of the set of populations that make up the Alotengo lagoon, located in the Costa Chica Of Oaxaca. These transformations were the key to adaptation to the environmental, demographic and political changes that threatened their survival in their environment, which mainly affect communities that settle in lagoon contexts, provoking population growth, lack of control in the fishing and the environmental damage that may lead to the extinction of the resource. Firstly, this text will explain the Alotengo lagoon system. Secondly, the chapter will mention the strategic political alliances that brought in the introduction of canals, piers and structures, transformations in the spatial organization and that increased the availability and proximity of fishing resources and transformed the natural cycles. Thirdly, we will explain the new forms of social organization of fishing work, and other variations in the fishing technique that enables the community to preserve the resource, the strengthening of the role of women in that economy as a trader of production and the development of their representation as Afro-descendants. Finally, as a result we will talk about the development of a constant link with the tourist market of Acapulco, which generated a precarious but permanent economy in the village.
10. Understanding the Working in Working Waterfronts: The hidden faces of the industries that make up the working waterfront
Jamie Doyle, Marta Maldonado, and Flaxen Conway, Oregon State University
Working waterfronts define industries that are reliant upon water access, and encompass everything from wild harvest seafood and oysters to towboats, shipping, and marine research. This chapter will explore changes to Oregon’s working waterfront industries, their role in coastal heritage, and what it means for working waterfront industries to be resilient. Working waterfronts around the county share similar challenges, and yet each state has its own unique issues. Oregon’s working waterfronts are not just facing issues of infrastructure and a changing seafood industry; they face an identity crisis. Many of the industries along Oregon’s working waterfronts are off-limits to the public, hard to see, and not something that everyone knows about. These industries often play critical social, cultural, and economic roles in the local community, but without an identity, it is hard to keep these sectors understood and supported. We look at a few projects that have worked to give a face to these industries to help locals and tourists alike to see the crucial role they play in this place.
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