The Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe vocalized support during a recent Dungeness River Management Team meeting, where local company Taylor Shellfish Farms discussed its proposal to develop a 30-acre geoduck farm in Dungeness Bay.…
Members of the Skokomish Watershed Action Team, which includes the Skokomish Tribe, have been collaborating for a decade on how to best restore the Skokomish watershed, located at the southern…
OLYMPIA (May 18, 2007) – Puget Sound treaty Indian tribes and commercial shellfish growers have finalized an agreement that will protect and enhance the resource while resolving legal issues from a federal court ruling that re-affirmed treaty-reserved tribal shellfish harvest rights. The pact resolves lingering legal issues from a 1994 federal court ruling that upheld the tribes’ treaty-reserved shellfish harvest rights. The agreement preserves the health of the shellfish industry, recognizes the importance to the tribes of their shellfish harvest rights and provides greater shellfish harvest opportunities for everyone in the state.
OLYMPIA (May 30, 2003) — Tribal shellfish harvesters across western Washington have been reporting drastic drops in orders due to the continuing Severe Acute Repertory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China. “Geoducks are eaten in restaurants in China, but now because of SARS, it seems like no one even wants to go out in public,” said Dave Winfrey, shellfish biologist with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. Most of the geoducks harvested in Washington are eventually sold in overseas markets, such as China.
“We have geoduck fishermen going out for half days, filling 500 pound orders when they are used to filling orders four times that size,” said Winfrey. “The geoducks themselves are safe; there just isn”t a market right now. This is a huge blow not only the individual harvesters, but to their families and entire tribal communities.”