Many people share the dream of sustainable local food production. In Tenakee that dream is already a vigorous reality, and getting better all the time. Supporting local food production–both gardening and wild harvest–promotes conservation of resources at the most basic level. The following stories highlight a few of the community-wide sustainable food projects in the works.
Donald See and Tenakee Inlet’s Marine Sanctuary
By Molly Kemp
Recently I listened to a TED talk on Raven Radio about the stunning success of marine sanctuaries world-wide. Renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle and others described how protecting a small piece of ocean real estate can rapidly replenish and restore surrounding ocean ecosystems.
It occurred to me that we benefit from a marine sanctuary right here in Tenakee Inlet, one that has been doing its job for almost 40 years. The subsistence/sport-only zone that excludes commercial crabbing near Tenakee Springs is a perfect example of a marine sanctuary at work.
This low-harvest area and the drifting planktonic crab larvae produced there surely factor in Tenakee Inlet’s sustained crab productivity. This foresighted regulation was primarily the work of Donald See.
Don grew up in Tenakee, and returned after graduating from Mt. Edgecombe High School and serving in Vietnam and Cambodia. After his military service Don returned to commercial fishing and trapping, and from 1983-1987 he was president of the Alaska Regional Fish and Game Advisory Board. In that role he worked with ADFG Commissioner Don Collinsworth to institute the Tenakee crab sanctuary concept. It is a lasting legacy. Juan Munoz recalls that Don also served on a federal team negotiating international fisheries treaties. A few weeks after negotiations ended successfully Don’s phone rang. Don answered as usual – ” My dime, your time”. A voice on the phone said “Please hold for the President of the United States” and it was indeed Ronald Reagan calling to say thank you.
Don See was one of the first people I met in Tenakee Springs back in 1976. My partner and I were scruffy young pilgrims looking for a sustainable life in the woods, and most locals were legitimately skeptical that we’d be around long.
Don was immensely welcoming and generous. While we were working on salvaging material from an old floating bunkhouse in town, Don invited us to sleep in his tiny cabin and share meals with him.
I was young and dumb, and had no idea of the trauma of Vietnam that haunted Don, or much of anything else. Don told me his heritage was “Tling-a-chino” and I thought that was cool. All I knew beside that was that Don was kind, and liked listening to the Allman Brothers. Hearing the melody of “Little Martha” brings me back to those days in a flash.
Now I am getting old, and I am still not the sharpest tack in the box. That’s my only excuse for taking so long to appreciate what Don did for Tenakee, and how far ahead of science and politics he was in promoting the concept of a marine sanctuary here. Thank you, Don. Gunal’cheesh!
