Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... MAN: My rappel!

MAN: Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful.

MAN: Good morning, everybody.

Woo!

Let's do it again!

MAN: Nicely done!

MAN: Oh, yeah!

Fourteen and a half.

Yes, that was awesome!

[ people cheering ] There you go, up, up... ED JAHN: Tonight on Oregon Field Guide: Where some see invasive species, others see the makings of a delicious feast.

We've got the dandelion pesto made with dandelion greens.

MAN: They don't call this "the Graveyard of the Pacific" just to be funny.

But first, meet the Columbia River Bar Pilots.

They give us an up-close view of one of the most dangerous jobs in the maritime industry.

Think about all the things we buy -- clothing, sneakers, coffee, cars.

Most of it comes in by ship to ports like this up and down the Columbia River.

But for a ship to make it here, it first has to cross the Columbia River Bar, a stretch of water so treacherous that it can strike fear in the heart of even the most experienced mariner.

Fortunately, these ships get a little help from the Columbia River Bar Pilots.

MAN: Hold on.

MAN: Every time we go to work, there's a real risk.

MAN: That was a 12-foot swell that just went by, but most of these are 8 and 10 feet.

ED JAHN: Every day, Captain Robert Johnson heads out to sea to meet ships as they encounter the crashing surf, unpredictable currents, and fierce winds of the infamous Columbia River Bar.

JOHNSON: There's no question but it's a very hazardous stretch of water.

Captain Johnson is a Columbia River Bar Pilot, and his job is to help these mostly foreign vessels cross the bar safely.

But first, he has to get onboard, using nothing more than a rope ladder.

JOHNSON: Okay, are you ready?

And you can never let your guard down.

The nicest day, you could end up in the water.

Then, if everybody doesn't react properly, you can be lost.

Good morning, everybody!

And with that, Captain Johnson shepherds another ship across the bar without incident.

It's something Columbia River Bar Pilots do nearly 10 times a day all year long to keep $24 billion worth of goods flowing to ports up and down the river.

Only bar pilots can make the call to close the bar due to bad conditions, and they don't do it often.

MAN: The Columbia River Bar's build is the roughest in the world.

It's always kind of a balance for us of how much risk are we willing to take to keep the economy moving.

When ships can't cross the bar, the entire maritime industry on the Columbia River shuts down, which can back up trains into the Midwest that are bringing grain down to export, cars going all the way to the East Coast from here.

You know the longer that it's closed, the more economic hardship it's going to cause, and not just to the ports on the Columbia River, but the entire economic system.

[ ship horn blowing ] Ships that want to reach critical Northwest ports have no choice but to run this narrow gap between Peacock Spit in Washington and Clatsop Spit in Oregon.

It's a place where waves from as far away as Japan collide headlong with the river, and shifting channels and Northwest storms create a violent cocktail of hazards.

It's a gauntlet that has killed 2,000 men and has sunk 700 vessels since record-keeping began.

MAN: They don't call this "the Graveyard of the Pacific" just to be funny.

[ waves crashing ] JOHNSON: There's other places that are equally bad, but they're not major ports where you've got an average of 10 ships a day coming and going.

The consequences, if things don't go right, are it runs aground in a sandbar.

If it's stormy weather, it runs aground on the jetties, in which case it probably breaks in half, it spills cargo, it spills oil, you've got 20 crewmen that may or may not get off of it.

I mean, it could be a monumental disaster.

The dangers of the bar and the need for experienced, local pilots was recognized even before Oregon statehood.

JOHNSON: We trace our heritage back to Captain George Flavel, who was here in the mid-1800s.

Captain Flavel required all of his people to have sailed as shipmasters before they became pilots.

We have that same requirement today, and it traces itself back to Captain Flavel.

MAN: Well, you see all these little targets?

Every one of them is a ship.

Modern-day pilots work 16 days on, followed by 14 days off.

Yeah, his time is 9:05.

They can be called out at any time, day or night, on good days and bad.

It's such an ongoing thing.

It just never stops.

[ woman speaking over radio ] And that's what you have to keep up on.

Yeah, it's 13:30.

Today, a crew heads out to pick up a pilot who has finished guiding an outbounder across the bar.

The pickup crew heads out in one of two 72-foot fast boats the pilots own that can travel up to 30 knots and make the run in about an hour in good weather.

[ waves crashing ] But conditions are growing rough.

When we get out into this area around Buoy 14 is where the swell really starts to pick up.

To make the pilot transfer, the pilot boat has to run neck and neck with a 600-foot-long bulk carrier as it pitches and rolls in the swell.

MAN: We like to have about a 12-knot boarding speed.

If they're going too slow, it's really hard to pin the vessel alongside.

JOHNSON: That pilot boat was made to have 10 collisions with a big steel ship every day.

At its best, we land very gently.

At its worst, we crash against the side of the ship.

As the ship looms 20 to 50 feet above the water, the pilot boat noses into position to create a landing zone.

JOHNSON: I don't believe I'm going to jump off of this nice big ship that's moving around so much onto that little boat, but that's -- that's what I'm going to do.

All of your senses are heightened.

If something's going to go wrong, now is when it's going to go wrong.

Captain Dan Jordan makes this jump look easy.

MAN: It's sheer terror followed immediately by an enormous feeling of satisfaction.

It takes every ounce of strength you have at times.

It takes a great deal of skill and judgment.

A bar pilot can never be wrong.

If we err on the side of caution, the river becomes uncompetitive.

But on the other hand, we can't err on the side of being some kind of a cowboy out there.

The year before I got into the Pilots here, I was captain of a ship carrying ammo to the Persian Gulf, so it's a different set of dangers.

[ laughs ] JOHNSON: Today we consider ourselves very progressive, and these are among the most modern pilot boats in the world.

But the Columbia River Bar Pilots used a rowboat to get between the pilot boat and the ship up until the mid-1950s.

They would row in and probably crash against the side of the ship, grab that rope, and up you'd go.

Then they progressed, and it was a huge step -- was the Peacock.

WAER: I've been here since 1981.

I'm the longest-serving pilot here right now.

George Waer knows every inch of the Peacock.

The boat now rests peacefully in front of the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

Come on in to the hellhole.

George remembers its wilder days.

WAER: It's been 16 years since I've been in here.

I was kind of wondering, I wonder if I should walk around and just get reacquainted with it, but it's like I -- it's like I was here last week.

These ports are all an inch thick, and most of them have been knocked out at one time or another.

The Peacock was a rough ride.

It was loud and reeked of diesel fuel.

Its round bottom shape was based on a German rescue boat design that helped it tackle heavy seas, but not comfortably.

WAER: You didn't even try to move without having ahold of something.

Like a bucking bronco, closest I can come to it.

What made the Peacock legend, though, was a small boat called the daughter boat that pilots launched from the deck.

This is what makes the whole thing work.

This is the daughter boat.

The Peacock itself wasn't built to run up against ships, so the daughter boat was used to ferry pilots back and forth.

JOHNSON: The Peacock would sort of buzz in alongside fairly close, 100 feet off the ship.

[ engine buzzing ] The boat operator had already started the engine on the daughter boat, so the engine's ruh-ruh-ruh.

The engine was loud and a big part of what the Peacock was.

[ boat engine revving ] Returning the daughter boat to the Peacock was always a high-stakes adventure.

WAER: We're talking about 18-, 20-, 25-foot swells at times, and the Peacock is just rolling and pitching.

The stern of the Peacock was over here, so he comes over here, and now it's over there.

So the boat would run up into the ramp as far as it could go, and the pilot boat operator would reach down with his hook, hook into that bridle, and the winch would winch the daughter boat back up into position, take the pilot home.

Before the Peacock came into service, rough conditions forced pilots to close the bar hundreds of hours a year, too unpredictable for most shipping companies.

After the Peacock, closures dropped by about half, and shipping on the Columbia boomed.

WAER: Everything I see brings back memories.

You always knew it was going to bring you back.

Maybe not the way you left, but it was going to bring you back.

Today, the Peacock has been retired, and the bar pilots have entered a brave new world.

70% of ship boardings now don't even involve a boat.

JORDAN: It is unique.

We were the first pilot group in the United States to use a helicopter, and a lot of it has to do with the rough weather out there.

[ man speaking on radio ] In bad conditions, it can take a pilot boat several hours to reach a ship.

By helicopter, Captain Dan Jordan is looking down on a ship just 12 minutes after taking off from Astoria.

MAN: Coming around to the right.

He clips into a 3/16th-inch wire before dropping 30 feet to the deck.

JORDAN: Once you're out the door, there's nothing I can do.

I'm hanging onto the helicopter and putting my life in their hands.

Yeah, it takes a little getting used to, stepping out the door and letting go and trusting the cable and somebody up there lowering you down to the ship.

The idea of going out in the middle of the night, 2 o'clock in the morning in a storm, it makes it a little hard to sleep beforehand.

There's times when they pick you up off the ship in the middle of the night, I wind up swinging back and forth underneath the helicopter on the cable.

I don't really like that.

Bar Pilots are mariners at heart, and the idea of using helicopters instead of boats didn't come easy.

That was a tough one, especially for us old-timers.

And I can be honest, I'm still getting over it.

But helicopters have proven far more efficient than boats.

And since Pilots began using choppers in 1997, there have been no deaths and few accidents, making heli-boarding even safer than boat-to-boat transfers.

In my career here, we've lost three seamen over the side, rigging pilot ladders.

[ rotors whirring ] Swinging around under a helicopter at 3:00 in the morning in 60 knots of wind is not exactly a safe thing, but compared to getting on a ship in bad weather, it's safer.

MAN: I see those ships go by, and I got a pretty good view from my house.

As old as I am now, I'm certainly glad I don't have to do it anymore.

[ bell clanging and seals barking ] Among the Columbia River Bar Pilots, Don Nelson is known to everyone.

Now 88, he's lived his entire life within sight of the ocean.

Don started out back when rowboats were used to transfer pilots between the pilot boat and the ship.

The oars were known as "idiot sticks."

NELSON: As a kid, I grew up in Youngs Bay, so I had a rowboat and a sailboat.

So I was -- I was well used to the idiot sticks, believe me.

Don made 50,000 crossings of the bar in his time, a record.

NELSON: Yeah, a lot of people have told me, "Well, you must know where every rock is on that bar."

I says, "No, I don't, but I know where they ain't."

[ gulls cawing ] Don's long career came at a cost.

He carries scars from one storm in 1962 that cost the life of a dear friend.

NELSON: Those rowboats were always getting rolled over in a big storm.

And I was with Captain Ed Quinn and my boat partner, Bill Wells.

So we rode over to the boat, and Captain Quinn came down the ladder.

And we turned around to go back to the pilot boat, and here comes this terrible squall.

It must have been blowing 70, and swells probably 15, 20 feet.

Rolled us over, so we're in the water, and the pilot boat lost us, couldn't find us.

And 17 hours later, my boat partner, Bill, had died.

[ bell tolling ] We finally got ashore, and we were so weak, we had to hang onto each other.

If the weather had not broken around 5 o'clock that next morning, we would never have made it.

Amazingly, both Don and his partner, Ed Quinn, returned to work, but tragedy soon struck again.

About a year later, he fell off a Jacob's ladder and drowned.

Now, that, that broke my heart.

But that's the ocean.

[ gulls cawing ] VALENTINE: There's beautiful days, and there's days out there where I go, "Wow.

Why am I doing this?"

I know why I'm doing it, because I love it, but there's days out there where it gets rough.

And that's one reason I think complacency doesn't kick in too often, because every time, it's different.

When a bar pilot's job is done well, the work doesn't make headlines.

[ man speaking over radio ] Thank you.

But because of their work, the rest of us can take in the view from Astoria and watch ships that weigh 70,000 tons glide effortlessly up and downriver as if by an invisible hand.

WAER: You walk away knowing that you've done something not a lot of other people in the world could do.

[ rotors whirring ] It's terrifying, but it's the most satisfying job in the world.

MAN (ON RADIO): He's at the door.

Covering is very good.

It's a little bit spicy.

Cajun-fried American bullfrog legs, dandelion pancakes, red swamp crayfish salad.

Now, where some people come out here and see nothing but a sea of invasive species, others see all the makings of a dinner feast.

[ frog croaking ] MAN: Bullfrogs are a major predator in aquatic systems, so they eat essentially everything they can stuff into their mouths: fish, other frogs... they eat small birds, ducklings, goslings, they'll eat rodents.

And really, the only thing that seems to limit their ability to eat things is the size of their mouth.

CASSANDRA PROFITA: American bullfrogs are an invasive species.

They spread diseases that can wipe out native frogs.

Out here, they're missing many of their natural predators and diseases, so they do very well in this landscape.

Get our gear together here.

Tom Kaye wants to turn the tables on these hungry predators by putting them on the dinner table, but he has to catch them first.

So there's one right there.

You see the glint off its eyes.

It looks like there's several right along the bank there.

The frogs are less likely to leap away from you in the dark.

We spotlight them with a flashlight, and then another person creeps up from a different direction with a spear and then makes a final plunge to catch the frog.

WOMAN: Nice.

Tom directs the Institute for Applied Ecology in Corvallis.

The group restores native habitat in Oregon.

That means facing the daunting task of controlling invasive species.

Lately, they've been eating away at the problem.

Welcome to the 2015 Invasive Species Cook-off.

[ cheers and applause ] The institute draws people to its cause by showcasing invasive species in an annual feast and cooking competition.

Many invasive species are quite edible and quite delicious, even.

For example, bullfrog legs are quite delectable.

In fact, you know, they taste like chicken.

Ecologist Ben Axt is targeting a different aquatic invader for the cook-off: crayfish that can take over lakes and ponds from native species.

These are red swamp crayfish.

They're an invasive crayfish species in Oregon.

You can tell it's red swamp crayfish from the native one, because it has these bumps on the claws.

These are from Louisiana area.

These came in through science classrooms, bringing them into classrooms to learn about nature and then releasing them into our waterways here.

These are tasty.

I'm going to steam them up and make them into a kind of a crab dip.

It should be pretty good.

Ben is confident about his chances in the cook-off.

They do taste a lot like little lobsters or little crabs, and starting with something as good as crayfish is definitely the best way to go.

He's adding two invasive plants to the crayfish dip for what he calls the Cream Cheese Triple Threat.

I'm going to put a dollop of my cream cheese mixture onto the toast, and then chop up my crayfish and top it with that, and then top that with a couple other invasive species, a sweet pea vine and some carrot flower.

Institute board member Bob Hansen has something sweeter in mind.

These are non-native Himalayan wild blackberries that basically take over a habitat and become a monoculture.

For the cook-off, Bob's making blackberry scones.

And I love these scones.

They're what I call Pacific Northwest hand-thrown scones.

And they take on kind of a very wild and unstructured life of their own.

And this gets pretty messy.

I haven't expanded to other non-natives yet, but I think that's one of the beauties of this invasive species cook-off.

It causes you to think bigger about what the possibilities are.

Meanwhile, botanist Jennie Cramer is going after another thorny plant.

We're out here to collect Canada thistle, and this is an invasive species here in Oregon.

It's all over the state.

It's all over the country.

It's actually pretty much all over the Northern Hemisphere.

You'll find it in places that are disturbed.

Usually there's been either some development or logging of some kind.

If you go to a place, and there's just tons and tons of thistle, we're probably not going to get rid of it there.

But if you come to a place and there's just a few thistles, like this meadow, you actually could make a really big difference on a local site level.

She'll cook the plants into a quiche.

With some of the lower stems, what I'll do is I'll peel back the skin, and it's really tender and tasty.

And they're just like asparagus.

You can eat it raw, but I'm going to cook it in butter, because I want to win.

At home, Jenny cuts dandelion greens from her backyard, a second invasive plant for the quiche.

So we've got dandelions and thistles here.

And basically what we're going to do is, because the thistles have thorns, I'm going to boil them down first, just to make sure I don't get any pokeys in the judge's mouth.

And then we'll sauté all this goodness with some other things.

While the thistles cook in one pan, the dandelion greens go in another.

So now we have dandelions, leeks, shiitake mushrooms, basil, oregano, sage, and a whole lot of butter.

I am masking the wild flavors a little bit on purpose, because they are pretty potent, and we want it to taste good as well as be eradicating our invasive species.

Yup, I think we're good to go.

At the cook-off, the tables fill with invasive species creations.

Tom fries up his frog legs with Cajun spices and cornmeal.

KAYE: There's an interesting "ew factor" around eating some invasive species, like nutria or frog legs.

It really seems odd to a lot of people, and so they're at the same time repulsed and fascinated.

Very good, excellent.

Then he sizes up the other dishes.

We've got the dandelion pesto made with dandelion greens.

That looks delicious.

So this is the invasive species triple threat.

It's got red swamp crayfish, sweet pea vine, and carrot flowers.

I'm nervous about the crayfish.

That's competition for the frog legs.

Over here is the starling bacon kabobs with a blackberry reduction sauce.

The bacon-wrapped starlings is a ringer I hadn't seen coming, so now I'm really worried.

[ indistinct conversations ] Okay, so here is how the judging is going to work.

Each dish will be judged in terms of its presentation, its creativity, its taste, and its conservation benefit.

The judges give each dish an overall score.

The frog legs are a hit.

They're very flavorful.

But the crayfish dip scores higher.

KAYE: The results are in.

The number one in savory meat was the Cream Cheese Triple Threat by Ben Axt.

The first place for the savory vegetarian dish was the Canada thistle dandelion quiche prepared by Jennie Cramer.

[ cheers and applause ] In the end, Tom says, eating invasive species isn't really the solution.

Tastes like chicken, but it's sweeter.

But it does get people's attention.

KAYE: We don't really think that we're going to eat our way out of this problem.

It's really an awareness method to bring people to the table, literally, to eat them and talk about them and the damage they're doing in a more lighthearted environment.

Because, let's face it, some of the impacts they're having are pretty devastating and kind of depressing, and it's important to maintain our enthusiasm in the face of a problem like that.

Well, you know, it's not half bad.

[ laughs ] If you say so yourself.

If I say so myself.

[ ♪♪♪ ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

[ bell ringing ] [ birds chirping ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.