Documentary Tackles Pebble Mine Controversy

Photo: USGS

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COMMUNITY NEWS

The award-winning documentary film, Red Gold, will be making its debut in Seattle Wednesday. The film is co-produced by Trout Unlimited and Felt Soul Media, and co-sponsored locally by Slow Food Seattle. Red Gold is a one-hour documentary film on the proposed Pebble Mine told through the unique and disparate voices of commercial, subsistence and sport fishermen of Bristol Bay, Alaska – the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The film documents the tension between mine officials who say they will build a clean mine so that the salmon habitat is untouched, and local fishermen who oppose the mine.

“Red Gold” awards include: Telluride Mountainfilm Festival’s Audience Choice Award and Festival Directors Award. Banff Film Festival-The People's Choice Award.

Alaska is North America’s salmon stronghold — unlike the Lower 48, where salmon runs have gone extinct or fallen dangerously low, prompting fishery closures earlier this year. During the 2008 season more than 40 million salmon returned to Bristol Bay and its river systems to spawn due to abundant and intact habitat and science-based state management.

Ironically, Pebble has accomplished the seemingly impossible by uniting non-traditional allies— commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen, Alaska native groups and Seattle-based seafood processors— around a common cause. All agree: they don’t want to gamble with Alaska’s wild salmon. Accidents happen despite good intentions, and another Exxon-Valdez disaster would taint Alaska’s “pure and natural” salmon brand and cripple the industry. Concerns about the mine’s potential effects, notably that acidic runoff containing metals harmful to salmon, such as copper and zinc, could jeopardize the quality and reputation of Alaska’s lucrative wild sockeye salmon industry.

When: Wed. Nov. 19th 6-8 p.m.
What: Red Gold Film Seattle Premiere
Where: SAM - Seattle Art Museum Auditorium, 1st and University Ave., Seattle, Wa.
Also: Taste Restaurant at SAM Featuring Bristol Bay Salmon
Who: Free and open to the public

After the film, we invite you to join filmmaker Travis Rummel and Bristol Bay salmon fishers in discussion about the plight of the Bristol Bay salmon and the dangers posed to the watershed these fish call home.

Seattle chefs will be supporting the effort by serving wild Alaskan salmon, and educating their diners about the issues related to the fishery and the mine. Chefs are encouraging people to “Vote with their Fork,” a national effort that brings chefs and salmon lovers together to conserve salmon habitat.

For more information about this and additional events, visit eelgrassroots.blogspot.com.

-eelgrassroots

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