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his site is dedicated to Nat Bingham, without whose efforts there would most likely be no commercial salmon fishery in California today. Nat initiated, organized, and shepherded so many projects essential to the continuation of the fishery that we probably couldn’t list them all in this booklet. They included helping found PCFFA in the ‘70s, successfully opposing the Peripheral Canal, in the early1980s, and initiating the Winter Run Captive Broodstock Program andgetting the legislation passed that made it happen, as well as getting theSpring Run Work Group up and running in the early ‘90s.Nathaniel Shaw Bingham, (1939-1998), was a husband, father, civic leader,fisherman, historian, environmentalist, activist, and consensus builder. Natwas all these and more.A native of New London, Connecticut, Nat came from a prominent New England family. He was named after an ancestor who had been a whaling captain and arms supplier to George Washington. His great-great grandfather, Hiram Bingham, and great grandfather, Hiram II, were early Congregationalist missionaries to the Gilbert and Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. His grandfather, Hiram III, was the Yale archaeologist who led the exploration discovering the Incan city of Machu Picchu in 1911 and later became Governor and U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

Nat carried on the family tradition of public service through his efforts to protect and restore our nation’s fisheries.Nat’s professional history is impressive and demonstrates his boundless energy, dedication, and ability.Growing up in New England and the Bahamas, Nat developed a relationship with the sea which led him to begin fishing in Northern California nearly forty years ago. In 1964 he bought his first boat and began commercial fishing for salmon, crab, and albacore tuna. He sold his last boat, FV Ellot-M, in 1995, after his more than
full-time work on salmon restoration and fish habitat issues had kept him off the water for several years. During his early years he took on the first of many Northwest fisheries leadership positions, serving as president of his local fisherman’s association, the Fort Bragg Salmon Troller’s Marketing Association. In 1982, Nat became president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA, the largest commercial fishermen’s organization on the west coast), a position he held for nine years. He served as the organization’s Habitat Coordinator at the time of his death. Nat received the fishing industry’s highest award, “Highliner of the Year”, in 1989. In 1993, at President Clinton’s Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon, Nat was the leading fishing industry representative and delivered eloquent testimony on the declines of the salmon fishery and healthy salmonid habitat.

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