Working Waterfront Festival’s Portholes Project April Programming

In September 2013, the Working Waterfront Festival will mark its’ tenth anniversary. To celebrate, we are presenting Portholes, a series of free, monthly programs designed to engage residents and members of commercial fishing communities in conversations about critical issues facing the working waterfront. Each month’s programming centers around a theme. Programming during the month of April explores the theme Sustainability:

Tuesday April 9 – Sustainable Seafood Cooking with Henry Bousquet
Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech High School, 7:00 PM
Chef and culinary arts instructor Henry Bousquet will share family-friendly approaches to cooking abundant species including Pollock, Redfish and Spiny Dogfish. The audience will be invited to taste his creations and take home recipes.

Thursday April 11 – Film Screening: Red Gold
National Park Theater, 7:30 PM
At the headwaters of the Kvichak and the Nushagak Rivers in Bristol Bay Alaska—the two largest remaining sockeye salmon runs on the planet—mining companies Northern Dynasty and Anglo American have proposed to extract what may prove to be the richest deposit of gold and copper in the world. Filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel spent 70 days in Bristol Bay documenting the growing unrest among native, commercial and sport fishermen who oppose the proposed Pebble Mine as well as giving mine officials a chance to argue their case. The open-pit and underground Pebble Mine could require the largest dam ever constructed to contain toxic runoff from mine waste. Red Gold is a portrait of a unique way of life that would not exist if the salmon didn’t return with Bristol Bay’s tide. A discussion will follow the screening.

Friday April 19 – Film Screening: The Fish Belong to the People
National Park Theater, 7:00 PM
The Fish Belong to the People follows a group of family fishermen in Port Clyde, Maine as they work to save their fishing grounds from government, market structure, and themselves. With each passing season their way of life has slowly been extinguished by old ways of doing business that favors the most efficient and destructive ways of fishing over sustainability.

Partial funding for Portholes is provided by Mass Humanities. The Working Waterfront Festival is a project of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern MA, a non-profit organization. The FREE festival, a family friendly, educational celebration of New England’s commercial fishing industry, features live maritime and ethnic music, fishermen’s contests, fresh seafood, vessel tours, author readings, cooking demonstrations, kid’s activities and more. It all takes place in New Bedford, MA, America’s #1 fishing port, on the last full weekend of September. Navigate to us at www.workingwaterfrontfestival.org.