The relationship between humans and the sea has evolved over millennia in the Salish Sea (Georgia Basin/Puget Sound). Complex, pre-contact indigenous societies survived by adapting to and modifying their local environments for over 12,000 years. But the intricate, reciprocal connections of its indigenous inhabitants with local biota were disrupted, along with traditional ways of life, following contact with Europeans in the late 1700s. Successive waves of cultural drivers have since altered the local marine ecosystem and adjacent human communities, with developments in technology, demography, socio-political organization, law, and governance. Periods of relative stability in the European-dominated era of the Salish Sea may be defined by:  canneries (late 1800s); steam-powered vessels (1920s); end of the whaling industry (1950s); herring collapse (1960s); climate shift (1970s); formalized fishing rights (1980s); salmon collapse and aquaculture (1990s); seal resurgence (2000s); and overfishing, pollution and climate change (2010). By reconstructing its historical ecology, can local communities implement future policies capable of sustaining the Salish Sea for the benefit of present and future generations?  

Results/Conclusions:

We present a conceptual approach that integrates knowledge of the local natural and human history to inform future policy decisions. From the paleo-ecology, archaeology and history of the Salish Sea, we aim to identify major stanzas, defined as average states of the ecosystem during periods of relative stability.  Oceanography, stratigraphy, and the ecology of plankton, fish, marine mammals, and seabirds will specify the baseline components of the ecosystem as ecological markers within a stanza. This ecosystem-stanza approach will be formulated using mass-balance and other models integrating narratives to encompass situations of varying data quality, especially historical sequences, where the precision needed for complex ecological simulations are rarely available. The human communities that evolved adjacent to the Salish Sea will be described using archaeology, history, archives, science, and local and traditional ecological knowledge. Our goal is to build a rich collective knowledge of the past, informed by natural and human history, to enhance participatory research and science-based policy scenarios toward a sustainable future for both biota and people of the local ecosystem.