Thanks for joining me! This may not be my first adventure, and I certainly hope it won’t be my last. With the help of friends and the community outreach team at Hewlett Packard in Corvallis, I put my first publication online in 1998. While I’ve been involved in helping other publications along the way (Oregon.com, a travel resource hub) and Commonties.com, which launched the same year Twitter was born. While there is a plethora of great blogs for sailors (and some rocking good entertainment on Youtube!) I am not seeing YET a resource hub for sailors that specifically serves the Salish Sea.
The term Salish Sea encompasses the Puget Sound region and extends northward to British Columbia’s Gulf Islands and beyond up the Inside Passage. The ecosystems of the Salish Sea have long been challenged by the timber and paper industry, human waste deposits from our sewage systems, fuel spills and the daily transit of cargo ships including ginormous oil tankers. Environmentalists have been sounding the alarm for generations now, and with the recent news about the decline of our orca pods reaching the four corners of the planet I think it’s critical that those of us who can assist in monitoring these inland waterways step up and make ourselves heard.
There are many small things we can do as boaters that can have a big impact. Whether it’s taking extra care to keep engines running clean, minimizing noise and waves near shore, taking notes and reporting whale sitings, noting the decline and/or possible return of cretaceans, fish, and mollusks, and/or simply confronting those who violate the rules of the waterways by getting too close to marine life…we all need to take responsibility for our behavior out on the water. Seamanship in the Salish Sea should include being good stewards of this amazingly wonderful place. As I learned from the Girl Scouts: always leave a place cleaner than you found it.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Salish Sailors 