Listen here to the Show: my interview.
It’s a good interview, calm, seaworthy, straight to the heart of the matter — ecosystems, fish poetry, fishermen’s shanties, and the love of exploration of art and science as co-partners in this travel and walkabout by one guy, Duncan Berry.
Exhibits and Gyotaku Classes in Oregon
There are many places to discover Berry’s work and share in his wonder for the sea. Starting in Astoria, you can find permanent collections on display at the RiverSea Gallery and in each of the guest suites at the Cannery Pier Hotel & Spa. He has also created multiple enchanting murals for the recently renovated Stephanie Inn in Cannon Beach.
At Newport’s Oregon Coast Aquarium, a permanent exhibit, “Thanks Be to the Sea,” features over 40 of Berry’s gyotaku prints and a series of coastal photos. Highlights in this collection include prints of a 37-pound Chinook salmon, the pectoral fin of a gray whale, and a deep-sea viperfish. You can find the artwork located in the “Passages of the Deep” area of the aquarium, a stunning 1.32-million-gallon exhibit that illuminates three expansive ocean habitats connected by tunnels that stretch underwater for 200 feet.
Interested in creating your own gyotaku prints? Berry offers seasonal workshops through the Cascade Head Biosphere Collaborative and at the Columbia River Maritime Museum during the annual FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria in February, an event that brings hundreds of commercial fishers together to share their spoken-word poetry, stories, and song.
Stay tuned for future showings of “Blue Heart: Beauty and Change Along America’s Western Shoreline,” a collaborative exhibit with artist Dwight Hwang that debuted at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. The 25-piece show speaks to the transformative beauty of the Pacific Ocean and climate-driven changes unfurling along the western shoreline. — Kerry Newberry, Author
Duncan: “My work is to channel the beauty and power of this place, and to show what is possible when we care for the last great places. I am nearly 70 years old, have been living with my incredible wife Melany for 50 years, with two grown children nearby. I have started 5 businesses in my 40-year professional career in the diverse and seemingly unrelated fields of goldsmithing, porcelain enamel, apparel, ecosystem services, and sustainable seafood.
The common thread running through them all is that they were all design-driven, and I had the pleasure of being the creative director for all of them… I REALLY love working alone now, no creative briefs, committees, or consensus building, just “tracing god’s line” as my father used to say.
I hope my curation of images from this place moves you, and that some of them might come to live with you in your place of work or home sanctuary and, in doing so, connect you to a deeper relationship to the living planet.”
THE SEA
by Pablo Neruda, On the Blue Shore of Silence
I need the sea because it teaches me,
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
It’s not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from a sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.
What it taught me before, I keep. It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.
It seems a small thing for a young man,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the cracking of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.
*****
(Seesama)
This very
sea
within us
all
red
dark
warm
The pulsing
of all the winds
in the sails
of the heart
a draught of foam
through
the white
expanse
a question
falling from the oar
rolling back
onto the surface
of the wave
fear
behind the darkness
is this
very same sea
waiting
for the sea
Seesama
Seesama
meri
meis
kõigis
punane
pime
soe
Kõigi
kaarte tuulte
tuksumine
südame-
purjedes
vahujoom
läbi
valge
avaruse
mõlalt
pudenev
küsimus
veeremas
laine-
pinnale
tagasi
hirm
pimeduse
taga
kas see-
sama meri
ootamas
merd
I Am Salmon
my body
the elegant result
of millions of years of trial and error
adapting to mountain ranges that have come and gone
rivers once flowing now dry
rocks made and unmade
and me
still here
I am salmon
and my body is a simple miracle
red of gill
iridescent of scale
muscled for bursts and glides
small white ear bone in my head bearing
witness to it all
annular rings written
in calcium and mineral molecules
the origins of my mother and father
what river birthed me
what I ate
and when
and where
and this is only one page
in the book that I am
and you two-legged ones
coming late to this party
scarce 200 years now
but bearing chainsaws and dams
and sharpened hooks and strong nets
you who we call the salmon eaters
but who amongst you could survive
being dropped from your mother’s belly
onto clean black rock
into cold rush of oxygen-rich waters
emerging with only an egg sack at your belly
for a jumpstart
and nothing more
tumbling down tributaries
into estuaries
where the tang of salt burns your gills
spit out the mouth of the river
into the great liquid canyons of the continental shelf
with its legions of oil-rich eulachon sand lance anchovy
and herring
who amongst you
could return from a great arc to the north
looping back
years later
in a navigational miracle
to the taste
of the river
of your birth
feeling the flesh pulled from your bones
no food in your belly
single-minded purpose
of passing the genetic baton
in the perfect
tiny red spheres
like the circle completed once more
who amongst you
and in this midst of this
might race run
we give you humans our all
gifting your race with our bodies
from time immemorial
and all we ask in return
is that when you take our brilliant flesh
into your bodies
raising us to your lips
that you pause
and remember that
what you are consuming is this optimism
and persistence and selflessness
of ours
we salmon becoming human
and all we ask in return
is to honor our gift
by making the work you do in the world
extraordinary
burning us as rich bright fuel
so that the work you do in the world
will be
extraordinary
I am salmon
POEM & GYOTAKU: Duncan Berry Salmon River Steward
Berry: This is “life on the wild edge of a continent” where 3,500 miles of the North American landmass meets 5000 miles of open ocean…The land, sea, and air of this place act as a muse, sanctuary, and teacher for me.
The Berg (A Dream)
I saw a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a stolid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all—
No other movement save the foundering wreck.
Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass-green gorges lone,
Toppled; or lace of traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;
Towers undermined by waves—the block
Atilt impending—kept their place.
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through very inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.
Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath—
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.
*****
Berry:
DUNCAN BERRY grew up on the Clatsop Plains on the Northern Oregon Coast, son of author-father Don Berry and photojournalist mother Wyn Berry. He began his fishing career at the innocent age of 13 as a puller on his brother’s salmon-troller out of the Columbia River. He went on to captain the boat when he was 16 and then pursued other careers for the next 40-some odd years. These included making a living as a goldsmith and enamelist, starting and running a design and exhibits firm, entering the fashion business, and creating international brands in conventional and organic cotton.
During this same span of time, Duncan spent 30 years on Vashon Island off of Seattle, raising two rambunctious and beautiful children with his beloved wife of 44 years, Melany… In 2006, the Oregon Coast beckoned them home to form a non-profit to preserve a large property at Cascade Head named Westwind.
In 2012, Duncan re-entered the fisheries business as co-founder of Fishpeople, which is now a national brand distributing value-added seafood products in 10,000 stores in all 50 states and landings in Ilwaco, Garibaldi, and the Yukon. As a creative release, he currently writes poems and shanties about his life with fish, and time spent on or under the water, as well as being crazy about the Japanese technique of Gyotaku, or fish printing. He loves to swim with Salmon in the upper reaches of the coastal rivers and is a dedicated conservationist, believing that native species are the key to our iconic Salmon’s future here in the great NW….
“I admire fish more than most of the human beings I meet”!
He read this in our interview:
[The Columbia River Bar is the world’s most dangerous entrance to a major commercial waterway. This is where the force of the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. Conditions on the bar are extremely dynamic and can change hourly, with the ability to generate huge waves.]
*****
the mad queen
there are
dive bars,
gold bars,
high bars
and low bars
but there’s only one
Columbia River bar.
thank god.
we are all her subjects
we who set out
upon the waters
to meet this mad queen
and she waits for us
at times calm and patient
at others
gathered in her spring glory
brown and swollen
from a thousand upstream tributaries
tithing liquid to her
broad shouldered
salty swells
travel far
to meet her sweet
earth, rich waters
in between
rock jetties
stretched like arms
out into the sea
june of 1969
my brother
fresh from war
has built a troller
from mahogany, oak and fir
and I his puller
age 13
both of us
innocent and untried
that first day of the season
heads held high
breathing deep
of chill ocean air
and fresh paint
as we slipped our lines
heading west
dock talk
had told us three big boys
had crossed the bar
at slack
how lucky are we?
but the robot woman’s voice
on the weather channel
told us differently
16-foot swell at 9-second intervals
Is that bad? I remember thinking.
our smooth run down river
turning into a freight train
line up
of mountainous swells
one stacked on top of the other
25 five feet from trough to crest
taller than our poles
engine throttled back
we climb up and up
breaking through
into thin air
slamming down the back side
gear breaking free on the deck
and another
green water over the bow
this time
out into the frenzy of the bar
no worse timing than this
river in full flood
and big storm
over the horizon
sending its rhythmic
messengers out ahead
my brother’s voice rises
over the scream of the wind
“I’m turnin’ back next chance I get”
two story swells
growing to three stories
imprisoned in a rhythmic battering
me on the back deck
thigh deep
in crisp foaming sea water
the queen
has dressed in white today
to greet us
the south jetty
boiling mad
rocket bursts of spray
rising into the air
massive ivory surf on her flanks
like watching a train wreck
fascinating….deadly
2 hours in
shivering uncontrollably
half from fear
half from 52-degree water
underneath us
the river
fanning out
into open sea
as we glimpse the red light ship
there’s a space
in which to power turn
turn back to earth
re-turn to all that is solid
and fragrant
and known
passing over the still
white human bones
buried deep under sand
of those subjects
that chose
not to leave
their mad queen
alone and unattended
there are
dive bars,
gold bars
high bars
and low bars
but there’s only one
Columbia River bar.
thank god.
FisherPoets Oregon Coast Tour: Rescheduled
Newport — November 14, 2026
We had to postpone our FisherPoets Oregon Coast Tour stop in Newport because of the October 25th, 2026 fire at the Pacific Seafoods facility on the Newport Bayfront. We have rescheduled for November 14th, 4 p.m.- 7 p.m. All tickets for the previously purchased tickets will be honored for the new date. The event is sold out. If tickets become available, they will be posted on the Newport Fishermen’s Wives website.
