Fishermen in the Classroom

The Fisherman in the Classroom program invites commercial fishermen from Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary into the classroom to help students understand how they are connected to the ocean. Watch our video to learn more! #EarthIsBlue‬

Transcript

It’s... Nobody ever gets to meet a fisherman, a commercial fisherman, and it’s a treasure for them.

My name is Mike Hudson, and I’m a commercial salmon troller and I want to welcome you to what we used to consider a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco. I’m involved with this program that is called the Fisherman in the Classroom with the Sanctuary, and I get to talk with a lot of school kids about what it is that we are doing out there, and I find that’s very important to do.

“You have a question, I know it. I can see it. I can see it!”. I got approached by the people from the sanctuary, they said, “we’ve got this program here, fisherman in the classroom, would you be interested in coming to the schools with us?” And I said, “that sounds like a good idea, lets give it a try and see what happens.”

“This is Pete Winch. He’s the one who works at the sanctuaries, and this is Mike Hudson.” In the classroom Pete always starts the presentation out with a talk of the sanctuary out here. “We call it the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. There is a lot of things you can’t do that makes it protected, but you can fish.”

He hands it over to me. I tell them a little bit about fishing, after I talk about fishing and about the life cycle of the fish Pete will talk about the hatcheries. We talk to the kids about how everything in this world is kind of connected, you know? How salmon are so important for everything that lives inland.

We are out there to protect these fish. The sanctuary is out there to protect the fish, the ocean, and everything that lives in it. “...very important because we want to make sure that we don’t have any impact on these species that we don’t want to catch.”

These kids, they listen, you know? When I ask the kids, “Who here has ever gone fishing?” “Alright, five? Cool, that’s more than in most classes.”

A couple of hands come up. A couple, three hands in every class, and I just think it’s really not enough, you know? The way that the kids eyes light up sometimes when I tell a story, its pretty great. They take some of what I say home with them.