Book notes: Homewaters - A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound
Apr 27, 2025
By David B. Williams.
Got this book as a Christmas gift.
Scoring:
- Axe for the frozen sea: 10/10.
- Page count: 196, effective page count: about that.
I’ve really enjoyed travel-writing books like Oaxaca Journal and Coming into the Country. I like how the Nytimes does articles like Read your way through Chicago, where they recommend an interesting collection of books for that city. They haven’t done one for Seattle, but I’ve been keeping an eye out for books to include. There is healthy subreddit on Books on local Seattle history. This book should 100% be on the list!
The subtitle says it all “A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound”. I plan to keep this book on the bookshelf and loan to friends.
The Skagit river contributes 1/3 to 1/2 of the fresh water in Puget Sound.
Smallpox killed many Native Americans, probably coming across the US from trading and from the South from Mexico. Early European explorers were surprised to find sites that could “support 100 people” but were empty.
Did you know about the major naval battle called the “Battle of Maple Bay” in 1840s? The Laich-Kwil-Tach people (on the now-Canada side of Puget Sound) were constantly slave-raiding the coastal Salish tribes. The Coast Salish tribes banded together under the leadership of Kitsap and in ~200 canoes sailed a force to defeat the Laich-Kwil-Tach.
A great history of the “mosquito fleet”. At one point in the 1950s there were plans to put underwater concrete tubes to connect Seattle with West Seattle, just low enough so shipping wouldn’t hit them. But instead we ended up with what would become our modern ferry system.
Lots of great information about biodiversity in the Puget Sound: kelp, salmon, oysters, orca, rockfish, geoducks, seals, etc. Many of these animals can be 100-200 years old!
Geoducks are “arguably the most abundant biomass in Puget Sound”, however 99% of our geoduck harvest goes to China. We need to eat more geoduck! Geoducks and oysters are “prolific to the point of indecency”.
Oyster restoration happens faster if you leave the shells behind for other oysters to reuse.
Rather than artificially grow numbers of certain species (e.g. salmon farms), we need to recreate conditions for biodiverity to resume what it already good at: keep pollution low, don’t harvest too much, etc.
Again, highly recommended!