Coastal Heritage and Cultural Resilience

Preface 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. Th