Since I've temporarily moved back to Seattle, my seafood consumption has increased quite a bit. Before you balk, my diet is about 97% vegetarian. But being an Asian-American, seafood runs in my blood. I will say that, take it however you like. My father was a fisherman for most of his life, and a mushroom forager and a hunter for many years. We lived in Michigan for a long time, afterall. In fact, it was his frequent forays into the outdoors that inspired my own love for the environment and for wildlife. He took me to the state park nearly every week and on occasional hunts when I was growing up, though I dreaded the moment he'd hafta actually shoot at an animal. On these trips, he warned me that should the opportunity arise, he would shoot his rifle, but luckily, it never happened when I was around. Not like he never caught game. We ate duck and deer. The latter animal hit his parked car and died. He even caught a ring-necked pheasant one time, a beautiful male that we kept in our garage for a few days. I wanted to keep it as a pet, but we did finally cook and eat him.
My dad's love for hunting inspired my love for wildlife and nature. For some, that relation is no surprise. For others, they can see some relation between the two but coming from different ideals. For others, hunting and love for wildlife are considered in direct opposition of each other. How do we achieve environmental conservation and sustainable livelihoods? Those are the big questions we must ask.
My dad loves fish. I painted him the sockeye salmons above for his birthday (acrylic, 14.5" x 8.5"). Salmon runs have been facing tremendous decline. And I love to eat fish! I'm trying to be conscious of what fish are in the most danger of depletion from the world's oceans due to our consumption, according to the Marine Stewardship Council. And what about the floating garbage in our oceans large enough to be the size of a continent? Our plastic bag usage, packaging, and tossed cigarette butts contribute to this. We need to change our consumption, and it's not just participating in beach cleanups and putting litter in the right place. We need to nip it in the bud, at the source, what we buy, what we eat, what we discard, recycle, reuse or avoid buying at all. And government and industry play an even larger role and need to be held accountable, read Garbageland. Plenty of questions and ideas and things to do on a lot of different fronts. Now go!
In the meantime, I wanted to wish my dad a happy 77th birthday, and a big thank you for him inspiring me to do what I do... whether he knows it or not.
