December 5, 2019 — Over 500 vendors exhibited at the 2019 Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle in late November. For commercial fishermen, processors and small businesses, it’s the place to be.
The expo was winding down on Saturday morning. But Naknek fisherman Reba Temple was causing a stir with her unusual get-up, made of the mesh netting that salmon tenders use to collect a catch.
“It’s made out of scraps of brailer material. So there’s grommets and mesh brailer material and black straps, and it’s a ballgown,” she said.
Temple said the expo is a great place to catch up with the people and the products in the industry.
“Everyone’s here, you can talk to your processors, you can talk to your friends, see hydraulic pumps cut open so you actually know how they work,” she said.
Stickers and signs saying NO PEBBLE MINE adorned booths, as they have for the past decade. The mine would tap large copper and gold deposits near the headwaters of two major river systems in Bristol Bay. And as the Trump administration breathes new life into the project, many people here are worried.
“Nothing in the world has zero risk — especially when you have a mine of this size with the existing data that show very definitively that there will be impacts,” said Daniel Schindler, director of the University of Washington’s Alaska Salmon Program.