Closing Address of Puget Sound/Georgia Basin Conference 2009

2009 PSGB Research Conference Closing Address – Coast Salish Witness Ceremony and Call to Action Joseph K. Gaydos, SeaDoc Society

Thank you. It is an honor to participate in the Coast Salish witness ceremony. In keeping with the Rock Star Billy Frank's comments on Sunday night about telling the truth, I do have to admit to you all that we did all commit to this before we knew what we were committing to. And the last time I participated as a witness, a lot people got sent to jail and it was a very sticky situation.

My first thought when I was asked to serve as a witness in this ceremony was hey – do they have a witness protection program here too? I was worried. But, after Chief Lydia explained the ceremony to me and how the Coast Salish used this ceremony for thousands of years to pass on their oral tradition, I was honored to participate. I think that the fact that this Call to Action is being done in the format of a Coast Salish Witness Ceremony is a testament to the fact that the Call to Action recognizes that we all have a lot to learn from the people who were here first. We have a lot to learn from the people who have been here since the beginning and it is an honor to participate in this.

Since Larry and Ray made me Coast Salish for the day, I'd like to follow in the Coast Salish tradition and thank a few more people. I was going to take a few minutes to talk about how it's time to stop talking and start acting, but I think the thanking is more appropriate. Let me give thanks to all of you for participating in this conference and staying to the end. I'd like to thank the organizers, the people who helped get us here, the people who prepared and served our food, the people who raised our food, and all of the people who kept the home fires burning at home while we were here. It seems extreme, but in giving thanks at this level, we are reminded that we are all interconnected and interdependent. Just as the ecosystem is connected and we are connected to the ecosystem, we are all connected to each other. And the Dalai Lama reminds us that we'd all be a lot better off spending more time acknowledging and celebrating the similarities between ourselves than highlighting the differences. It shouldn't be that hard – we are 95% chimpanzee! We banter a lot about the differences between scientists and activists and policy people. Scientists just want to study everything and document its decline the activists say. Activists just want to do something, even if they don't know what the right thing to do is say the scientists. And as far as the politicians go, both groups slam them for not paying enough attention to how important the issue is. This call to action requires us to focus on the similarities and work together.

There is no secret while we are all here; it's because we love a place. And whether you call that place by the name of the beach in front of your house or the Puget Sound or Hood Canal or the Northwest Straits or Georgia Strait or the Gulf Islands, we're all talking about the same place. That is an inland sea that stretches from Olympia to Campbell River. A 17, 000 sq km sea, the land and watersheds that surround it, the thousands of species and the millions of people that call this area home. The international border and political boundaries that separate the Salish Sea are arbitrary when compared to the boundaries of the ecosystem.

And just as the Call to Action has stated, not only are we connected, but we share the same vision. This vision was iterated over and over during this conference by everybody I spoke to and listened to: We want to design a healthy future for the Salish Sea.

Designing a healthy Salish Sea is an exercise in place-based conservation, which has 3 tenants: to know, connect and protect. All of those were espoused this week. To know requires basic science and monitoring. To connect requires the translation and use of that science to inspire the people of the area. To protect requires using the science and the political capitol generated by educating people.

As the Regional Director of the SeaDoc Society, I'm in charge of our focus on the Salish Sea. Our vision is people and science healing the sea. People and science. Science alone just takes up shelf space or gigabytes on computers. The science must be translated and understood, it needs to inspire us and motivate us and improve the way we think and act. As scientists, we have only ourselves to blame for not helping to ensure science gets into the hands of the public. People out there are craving information about our ecosystem and part of our obligation in the pursuit of discovery is to share the information and this call to action is a reminder to me and the SeaDoc society of that obligation to share the information in ways that are meaningful to the myriad of audiences who need this information.

I hope that all of you can find how this call to action fits your life and recognize that this call must occur on all different levels. For some things, the call means we need more information. In other areas, we have the information and the call to action means moving dirt or changing policy. All of these are important. And while figuring out your call, I hope you can remember that we are all in this together and designing a healthy Salish Sea requires the work that each of us does.

Thank you.