WSG social scientist Melissa Poe has wrapped up an 18-month project, funded by the Puget Sound Institute and U.S. EPA, on the relationship between sense of place and the restoration of Puget Sound. Working with Swinomish Environmental Health Analyst Jamie Donatuto and the University of British Columbia’s Terre Satterfield and Robin Gregory, Melissa examined traditional harvesters’ and other residents’ connections to the Sound through extensive interviews and workshops along the South Sound and Skagit Delta. The team delineated four ways that people become tied to places along Puget Sound: activities such as harvesting shellfish, bird watching, and relaxing at the beach; cultural and family heritage; cognitive and emotional experience; and social connections. They found three factors connecting people to place that might help guide restoration efforts: access, knowledge, and ecological integrity. Melissa presented the team’s final report to the Puget Sound Institute and Puget Sound Partnership in April 2015 and at a special symposium in June honoring the late environmental economist Mark Plummer at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

The American Planning Association held its national conference in Seattle in April, and Nicole Faghin, WSG’s coastal management specialist and working waterfronts maven, was there to show the delegates what works or doesn’t on Seattle’s shoreline. Nicole took 70 planners from Canada, Bermuda, and coastal and riverine cities throughout the United States on a boat tour from Fishermen’s Terminal to South Lake Union. Like any tourists, they inevitably wanted to see the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat. But they also got a duck’s eye view of current controversies in a city that, for all its gentrified glamour, still has boatyards and fishing fleets within sight of downtown: boat shops vs. an intrusive bike path, city regulation vs. unplumbed house barges, noisy tour boats vs. houseboat dwellers, chic dockside restaurants vs. a working waterfront. Their reaction: “This city is beautiful!” And, upon viewing the F/V Tordenskjold, moored at Fishermen’s Terminal: “I can’t believe that thing is 104 years old and still goes to Alaska!” They talked about their own cities’ waterfront woes. “From the delegate comments about what’s been done to their waterfronts, I saw that we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping ours,” says Nicole. “We’ve been more proactive than a lot of places.”