The community group Juntos Podemos Ciudar Nuestro Rio Duwamish hosted webinars for fishers in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Khmer using videos co-created by UW SRP.
In the fall of 2020, our partner community group, Juntos Podemos Ciudar Nuestro Rio Duwamish (Juntos), held a series of three webinars for fishers in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Khmer using videos that we helped create to teach how to safely and legally catch and prepare salmon from the Duwamish River. Because salmon spend only a small portion of their life in the Duwamish River, they are the safest fish to eat from the polluted waterway.
Thirty people joined the webinars which Juntos titled "Healthy Fishing Together!" With support from guest expert BJ Cummings, the UW SRP Manager of Community Engagement, Juntos staff answered questions like whether cooking salmon skin would make it safe to eat (it will not due to contamination with polychlorinated biphenyls and other pollutants), what season salmon can be fished (it varies by species and year and is best to check with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife), and what the status is of the river's clean-up (several highly polluted "hotspots have been cleaned up and the riverwide clean-up is expected to be completed in about 20 years).
All webinar participants were compensated for the time they spent learning about safe fishing and provided with a digital "pocket guide" co-created by Juntos and UW SRP as a quick and easy reference with key points from the video series.
According to Juntos staff member, Jeraldi Gonzalez, who helped host the webinars, "The best thing about [the videos] for me would be the inclusiveness, having the videos be in the native tongue of community members. Everyone should have access to this information no matter what language they speak, and we were able to make that happen."
The videos that Juntos used in their webinars are part of a nine-part multilingual series titled "Healthy Fishing on the Duwamish: Let's Catch Salmon!" UW SRP helped create the series in partnership with Duwamish Community Health Advocates, Public Health- Seattle & King County, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10. The videos cover the legal and logistical aspects of catching salmon from the Duwamish River and demonstrate a few culturally appropriate, delicious, and healthy ways to prepare salmon at home. The series was released in June of 2020.