Coastal town greens the deep blue

I shot this story in April for Edible Portland, a quarterly magazine for Ecotrust in Portland in April. Port Orford, OR is quite an amazing place, as its one of the last true small boat fishing ports left in the West Coast. When you come here to drop your boat in, its quite literal! You won't find a ramp to cozy the trailer down to the water, oh no. A crane drops and lifts that bad boy out with you in it! Pretty interesting, especially when the tide is heading out!

Port Orford has resisted the siren call of the tourism song that has repurposed other coastal towns, chock full of trendy restaurants and kitsch stores. You almost feel like you are visiting a town on a smaller scale to Gloucester, Mass, the fishing community known for its tight knit salty dogs seen in "The Perfect Storm."

The fishing community is doing something pretty amazing. Recognizing the declining numbers of prize fish such as salmon, halibut, and just about everything else, they teamed up with scientists to establish a marine habitat reserve to protect fragile breeding grounds, and preserve a source for small boat fishing to continue, establishing a social, economical and environmental triple bottom line for the community.

My only regret on this shoot is we only had a day allocated to the shoot, and weather drove out the fishing crop we wanted to focus on, black cod, or butterfish as the Canadians like to call them, so we didn't have the boat access we were hoping for. I hung out at sunrise

to get the early birds heading out and talked with some of the local fisherman about what they liked best about fishing in the port.

The beauty of this job is the amazing range of people you get to meet. If you ever get the hankering to try your hand on a fishing boat for a day, I don't think you'll find a better group of people on the west coast to educate and entertain you while you work your butt off!