indigenous peoples' use of sea gardens for sustainable food production

I came across this article about how native peoples on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts created sustainable seafood (looks like mostly shellfish) systems and thought I'd share it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-indigenous-sea-gardens-produced-massive-amounts-of-food-for-millennia-180980447/

It's thin on the "how to" but interesting nonetheless. Happy reading!

Thanks for sharing!
I grew up in Alaska, and live in Washington State now, and have always been a little bewildered by how bountiful the sea really is! Even when you're on the very periphery of the ocean, digging clams at low tide, there's just an incredible amount of delicious food there. I grew up on the coast in Alaska, and we'd dig razor clams on low tides. The beach was only a few miles long, and there'd be hundreds of people out digging, but the limit was ~50 clams per person per day, and it wasn't hard to reach that limit. The big razor clams were 6+ inches long. Just an insane amount of food living in the sand - I wish we had some of the indigenous knowledge of what else was edible, because we'd see all manner of snails and other clams out there.
Now that I'm older and live in Washington, I think a lot about how the native people survived here, and I've felt a little disappointed with foraging in the forest - the berries are small and weird/bitter, and most of the vegetation is pretty disappointing. But I'm reminded just how easy it would be to survive if you lived along a nice beach, especially near a river with a salmon run! I've been out with friends several times and slurped a wild oyster from a shell. Just a few weeks ago we were walking a beach and saw clam signs, so assuming it was a steamer or razor clam I decided to show off my Alaskan Skills and dig it up by hand. To my surprise it was my first Geoduck, which is like a gigantic version of a razor clam - the thing was easily several pounds! It and some kelp would easily make soup for a few people, and it was like 2 minutes of digging in soft sand by hand. (for those of you concerned, I didn't have a license for it, so I gave it to some folks that had a license and a bucket full of them)
My point is, the ocean is crazy bountiful, and I can only imagine how much better it would be with indigenous management practices! Modern practices seem to lean toward "harvest the natural surplus, plus some" without the intentional management to increase the potential harvest in a more natural way. I'll have to look around for some of these projects in my area and see how they're going - I love seafood!

I found an article that explains some more of the how-to, and is a project from my area!
https://crosscut.com/environment/2021/12/swinomish-tribe-wants-resurrect-us-clam-gardening

Bartholomew Olson wrote:I found an article that explains some more of the how-to, and is a project from my area!
https://crosscut.com/environment/2021/12/swinomish-tribe-wants-resurrect-us-clam-gardening

To create clam gardens, Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada historically cleared beaches and moved rocks roughly the size of basketballs to low-tide lines to create walls, or terraces. Over time, the area behind the wall would fill in with sediment and shell hash — broken bits of shells — then flatten out and fill in to create a garden bed.

Just as with a vegetable garden, Hatch says, clam gardens require regular care and demonstrate that people can interact with and harvest from nature in a mutually beneficial way. Tribes maintain the rock terrace as it weathers storms and waves. They remove seaweed, and dig clams strategically, selecting larger clams and making space for smaller ones. If they don’t till the beach, it can get too compact and low in oxygen for baby clams to take root. “People often refer to that as fluffing the beach,” Hatch says.

It’s a time- and energy-intensive responsibility, but one that can connect generations to each other. “It's much, much more than just some rocks in the low tide line, right? It's a really culturally important practice that takes a lot of protocol to activate and maintain,” Hatch said.

Sounds a lot like using check dams, swales etc... to build sediment. Just in an intertidal region. I don't know about the region they are in, but it sounds like it would require considerable work to maintain. One big storm would move their rocks around, and move a lot of sediment.

Great concept!

Couple it with farming sugar kelp in the deeper water and you have sustainable sources of protein and carbs for a community.

Some info on sugar kelp farming. Really sustainable, cleans the water while growing, no inputs needed.

I know that Oyster producers on our Island are having problems due to changes in ocean chemistry. I read some promising information in the book "Drawdown" about making frames to help grow more kelp. It certainly has been described as a keystone species that can help our oceans in a multitude of ways.

Growing food in our oceans with a multi-species, mutually supportive approach has huge potential, just like tree guilds help on land.

Many ocean areas are at risk because of nutrients washing off farmland and down rivers to the ocean. I've also read proposals of growing seaweed crops specifically to move onto land and compost before adding it back to farmland/gardens to try to recapture those nutrients. In an environment like mine where you can let the seaweed get rained on all winter to wash off some of the salt, I could see that working. My friend in Nova Scotia used a system like that 30 years ago, so it's not a new idea by any means.

I have not read the article though to me these threads might be relevant, especially to folks new to these concepts:

https://permies.com/t/171764/Shellfish-Gardening

https://permies.com/t/51852/Saltwater-chinampas

https://permies.com/t/74407/chinampas

I often see the remains of rock walls in the sea around the coast here and am told they were used for fishing. I'm not sure how long ago they fell out of use.


Rock Fish trap Scotland

I tried to find a picture on the 'net and The only one I found (above) was from an Australian 'Blog which also describes they way they were used in Australia by the people there. Apparently the one pictured below has been dated to 7000 years ago. Normally it is hidden underwater since the water levels have changed since then.


Australian Rock and wood fish trap

Having just discussed this a week ago, the main BBC news has just run a story on seaweed farming.

BBC - Seaweed farming

Interesting article, Michael - thanks for posting the link!

I found this comment pertinent to permaculture:

"Large scale farms might be the industry's preferred way forward," he says, "but we would definitely favour smaller operations that are set in the sort of carrying capacity of the area that they're situated in."

Marc-Philippe Buckhout from Seas At Risk

It seems humans have become programmed with the idea that "bigger is better" or even "bigger is the only way", which is a shame.  More focus on small, sustainable, multi-species ocean farms might actually produce more food/products in total, even if the initial target product is produced in a somewhat smaller quantity. Sometimes the "big picture" is different from the "bigger picture"!

This is really cool. I know a man Neal Spackman does really good work on this topic

https://regenerativeresources.co/

What's happening! I wanna find out if native folks farm their own fish including salmon before spawning season. Do they also harvest kelp?

It was low tide at the beach today. I never realised before that we had a rock fish trap here....

Nancy Reading wrote:It was low tide at the beach today. I never realised before that we had a rock fish trap here....

So is this just the remnant of one, or is it still being used to harvest fish by someone local?

It's just the remnants of one. I don't think the traps have been used in living memory. I've not been able to find any written references either as to how they were used, so they may be pre-historic, or just so common as to be not worth mentioning. It used to be the seas would 'boil' when the mackerel came in, but that stopped 60 or so years ago....