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Steward of the Week: Brian Bennett
By FishRecycler | January 4, 2012
Brian Bennett co-hosts The Fish Schtick with Teeg Stouffer each week. The show serves as the podcast for both Recycled Fish and Moldy Chum, and is produced by Mauro Media.
Brian Bennett has been scouring the internet in search of interesting and irreverent stories related to mostly fly fishing content since 2005. Sharing these stories, pictures, videos, etc. has rewarded him with a global audience through his blog, Moldy Chum. What is Moldy Chum?
“It’s where fly fishing meets the Onion,” Brian explains.
The Chum delights thousands of readers every day. While it is mostly for fun, he is most proud of his ability to use it as a platform to educate and build awareness around issues and threats facing fish and their habitats. Brian scratches his head as to the size of his audience and continues to work diligently in search of that next unique fishing related subject to hit his webpage.
“We also have other media partnerships that we will continue to develop and evolve in the months ahead,” he says. “Most notably is our Fish Schtick partnership with Recycled Fish and Mauro Media.”
Brian also sits on the board of The Wild Steelhead Coalition, an organization managed by a group of volunteers whose mission is dedicated to increasing the return of wild steelhead to the waters and rivers of the Pacific Northwest.
“What separates the WSC from some of the other fish advocacy groups is their singular focus on wild steelhead and the waters they inhabit,” he elaborates. “Or unfortunately use to inhabit.”
The current focus of the efforts by The Wild Steelhead Coalition is fighting the Elwha River hatchery that was built to supplement steelhead and salmon runs on the Elwha River. Two dams are in the process of being removed on the Elwha which will restore the river back to its original wild state that once supported incredible runs of anadromous fish.
“Unfortunately, and despite science to the contrary, the federal government and the lower Elwha tribes felt it necessary to use hatchery fish to restore the runs,” explained Brian.
The Wild Steelhead Coalition has taken an active role in trying to stop the hatchery plan and will be focused on that effort in the months ahead. I asked Brian if he would elaborate on the science behind this potential undertaking.
“The science is clear on hatchery versus wild fish. Yet another recent study by Oregon State University scientists found that it takes only a single generation for steelhead trout raised in fish hatcheries to pass along bad genetic traits to populations in the wild. On the upper Elwha there is a resident rainbow trout population that carries wild steelhead DNA. These are descendants of the trout and steelhead that were trapped above the dams and have remained genetically pure ever since. Now that the dams are coming out, those fish will interbreed with the weaker hatchery fish, forever ruining a golden opportunity to rebuild the Elwha as a truly wild anadromous river, free of hatchery degradation. The logic used by the tribes and some scientists to justify the hatchery plan is that the sediment load released when the dams are removed will essentially sterilize the river so hatchery supplementation is necessary.”
Brian went on to explain. “Bill McMillan, who is arguably one of the premier steelhead and salmon researchers in the world, points to the lessons we learned on the Toutle River after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Boiling water, mud and ash flowed, wiping out every living thing in the river, yet just five years later the wild steelhead return was greater than what biologists thought was the fish carrying capacity of the river. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife then added hatchery fish back into the Toutle and the wild return proceeded to crash. McMillan and Dylan Tomine have coauthored a blistering indictment of hatchery programs which can be found in the latest issue of The Flyfish Journal. A must read.”
Brian’s passion for steelhead and their plight is even more fascinating considering fishing wasn’t something he enjoyed much as a child growing up in Boston.
“My early experience fishing,” Brian admits. “I thought it was stupid. It was summers with my Grandfather off the dock on a lake in Maine, which was really only a reason for him to get out to drink whiskey or grappa.”
Brian finally took up fishing in 2000 and evolved from a Rocky Mountain trout angler to a Pacific Northwest steelheader. But Brian isn’t the real angler of the family. That title belongs to his wife of over nine years, Marie. When he first met his future bride, she owned a Tracker bass boat that was equipped with two trolling motors and three fish finders!
Before Marie, however, there was almost Priscilla.
“I was a bike industry representative for a number of years and in 1995 while working the sales floor at one of my dealers in Santa Monica, a very attractive woman came in looking to purchase a bike,” he explained.
Brian tells me he spent a fair amount of time getting this woman sized and properly fitted to a bike and accompanied her on test rides. He finally closed the sale by getting her to try on some Lycra bike outfits.
“So now I’m convinced there is enough of a spark between us to ask her out on a date when I help her load the new bike into her car,” Brian explains. “So I bring her up to the counter to pay and when I glance down at her open checkbook I see the name Priscilla Presley.”
“The Priscilla Presley?” I asked.
“She smiles, puts her hand on mine and says, the one and only.”
“Brian still managed to offer to help her load her bike into her car, unsure of the date at this point, but she tells him that one of her personal assistants will be by to pick it up later.
“On her way out, I tell her it was a pleasure to meet her and give her my card saying if she ever needs another bike to give me a call.”
And?
“Never did hear back from her.”
Priscilla far behind him, Brian and Marie have been been blessed with a 3 year-old daughter, Josephine, “along with our first child, Clooney, who is a Jack Russell Terrier.”
He also works for Patagonia, the company who is renowned for environmentally conscious, high performance outdoor apparel. They have begun a two-year initiative called Our Common Waters to educate and engage their friends and customers.
“The company is taking a look at its global water footprint and what it can do to minimize that footprint,” Brian explains. “Our Common Waters is about balancing human water use with the needs of animals and plants. The more water people use, the less there is for everything else. The more water we waste, the more habitat we destroy. The more we pollute our streams and lakes, the harder it is for animals and plants to survive. Did you know that, as individuals, each of us drains an Olympic-sized pool of water (2.5 million liters) annually?”
Brian wants to see a political culture where the environment and preserving the quality of our waters is something that is a priority for voters and politicians.
“Seventy percent of all wadeable water in the country is degraded in some shape or form,” he explained to me. “What will that look like in 10 years if people don’t act? Hydraulic fracking, mountain top removal, hard rock mining, off shore drilling and dam construction are not just threatening individual waterways, but entire ecosystems. From Bristol Bay to the Sacred Headwaters and the wild rivers of Chile to the Gulf of Mexico, we have an opportunity to protect some of the last great wild places on our planet.”
Moldy Chum, or Le Chum as it’s affectionately called by its creators, is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at Find them on Facebook and Twitter as well.
You can also become a member of The Wild Steelhead Coalition like Brian by going to http://wildsteelheadcoalition.org. Brian tells me that if readers choose not to become members, they should at least read State of the Steelhead by WSC Trustee Dylan Tomine, which can be found online at http://wildsteelheadcoalition.org/Repository/WSC_State_of_SH_layout_1pp_.pdf
Patagonia has impressive apparel and an important message. Check out: http://www.patagonia.com/us/environmentalism.
-Josh Milczski
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