WHEN VISITORS from around the world descend on the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall this summer, they just might see Reedville boat builder George Butler explaining how to make a small skiff.

Or hear former Northern Neck menhaden captains Matthews Gaskins and Gus Dunaway explain how huge nets were deployed in circles to haul in the oily fish.

And if they schedule their trip on the right day, they might even hear the Northern Neck Chantey Singers perform the gospel-like songs they used to mark time hauling in those heavy nets decades ago.

Those Northern Neck residents join others invited to help give visitors an understanding of the traditions, culture and challenges in coastline communities from Long Island to North Carolina.

It's all part of a festival entitled "Water Ways: The Past, Present and Future of Mid-Atlantic Maritime Communities."

Betty Belanus, curator of the festival that will run June 23-27 and June 30-July 4, said it was inspired by earlier cultural studies of the region.

"I was very interested in the water and coastal traditions," said Belanus, an education specialist at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. "The more we looked at specific communities, the more we found that they're all facing similar challenges: how to cope with growth and development pressures, how to adapt to changing technologies and the decline of various fisheries, how to keep traditions alive in the face of rapid development."

To flesh out those ideas, the center sent researchers into various communities to put names and faces with the lifestyles.

It soon became clear that the best way to format the festival was to pick specific localities in the region to illustrate traditions and challenges shared throughout.

"We chose areas that were definitive of a certain tradition or type of fishing, taking Reedville because it's been such a center for menhaden fishing, Crisfield because it's the crab capital of the Chesapeake and so on," she said.