Join the next roundtable
While there are often opportunities to go deep in our respective fields, breakthroughs can come from unexpected connections and interdisciplinary discussions. The Salish Sea Science Roundtable is a virtual monthly seminar inspired by just that. Each month we’ll connect to share emerging science that’s shaping Salish Sea recovery and sustainable development, reconnect with colleagues in different fields, and enjoy thought-provoking discussions. We hope you’ll join us virtually the first Tuesday of each month from 12:30-1:30 pm PT.
Do you have a topic you want to learn more about or are you interested in sharing some of your organization’s new science? Email Marielle (marlars@uw.edu).
April 8: Offshore Renewable Energy in the Pacific & Potential Benthic Impacts
Co-hosted with the Pacific Marine Energy Center at Oregon State University
Dr. Sarah Henkel is a benthic ecologist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center and Associate Director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center at OSU. She will present on the history and current status of wave, tidal, and wind energy projects on the Pacific coast and provide an overview of studies she has conducted to assess potential effects of offshore renewable energy on benthic habitats and species including seafloor surveys, tracking fish responses to ship noise, and animal responses to EMF in the lab.
While the event is free, registration is required. If you have trouble accessing your unique link, you can always re-register to join directly or use the meeting ID: 926 7390 9310
- May 6 | European Green Crab https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrceutrD4iG9RbJudtSKI-Kua-NYLg73MX (meeting ID: 976 6252 5810)
- June 3 | Developing an Approach for Integrating Chemical Analysis and Transcriptional Changes to Assess Contaminants in Water, Sediment, and Fish with Dr. Markus Brinkmann https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIudu6trzItGNObRdSnwPLQIxMSMoSg-xrp (meeting ID: 963 1751 9727)
- July 8 | Assessing and mitigating climate change impacts on Pacific oysters with Dr. Chris Pearce https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZH_Zjpa4Q1WX3wVre-surA (meeting ID: 948 5812 6749)
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Check out the previous roundtables
- A Tale of Three Auks: Seabird Patterns and Population Change in the Salish Sea 02.04.2025 Slides | Recording
- Hindcasting the Pulse of the Salish Sea: Insights from ‘End-to-End’ Ecosystem Modeling of the Strait of Georgia using NEMO-ECOSPACE 01.07.2025 Slides | Recording
- Cumulative Effects Evaluation for Salmon Restoration: Merging Data and Using Causal Analysis to Address Hypotheses in the Whidbey Basin 12.03.2024 Slides | Recording
- Next generation urban greening 11.05.2024 Slides | Recording
- Using genomics to predict Chinook Salmon responses to climate change 10.01.2024 Slides | Recording
- Sea level rise resiliency 09.03.2024 Slides | Recording
- Enhancing climate change planning & adaptive management in marine protected areas 06.04.2024 Slides | Paper | Recording
- eDNA in the Salish Sea 05.07.2024 Slides | Recording
- Modeling to Strategically Manage Groundwater and Stream Flows 04.02.2024 Slides | Recording
- The Science Behind Evidence-Based Hope and Strategies for Countering Climate Doomism 03.05.2024 Key resources
- Cumulative Effects on Southern Resident Killer Whales and Contaminants of Emerging Concern 2.6.24 Slides | Follow-up Resources | Recording
- Update on the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project 12.5.2023 Slides | Recording
- Emerging Salmon Science with Fisheries and Oceans Canada 11.7.2023 Chrys’ Slides | Tanya’s Slides | Recording
- Climate-Ready Fisheries & Modeling 10.3.2023Slides | Overview | Paper | Recording
A Tale of Three Auks: Seabird Patterns and Population Change in the Salish Sea 02.04.2025
The Tufted Puffin, Marbled Murrelet and Rhinoceros Auklet are all in the same family (Alcidae), but show different seasonal dependencies on the Salish Sea. In addition, their nesting strategies differ and their diets overlap only somewhat. Scott Pearson from Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife used data from at-sea surveys and nesting colony-based studies to compare and contrast these three alcids, showing how their differences manifest in diverging population trends, and providing an overview of their status in the region with insights into potential population threats.
Hindcasting the Pulse of the Salish Sea 1.07.25
How have ocean conditions, lower trophic level dynamics, and species interactions shaped the Strait of Georgia’s marine ecosystem over the past 40 years? What long-term changes can we anticipate in the future? Greig Oldford with Fisheries & Oceans Canada highlighted insights generated via integration of the Ecospace ecosystem model with a custom NEMO-based oceanographic hindcast. This ‘End-to-End’ model is being used to evaluate hypotheses scoped by the Canada-US Salish Sea Marine Survival Project (SSMSP) related to synergistic effects of predation, prey availability, habitat, competition, and other factors on the productivity of Pacific salmon. The potential for decadal-scale ecosystem forecasting will also be highlighted.
Cumulative Effects Evaluation for Salmon Restoration: Merging Data and Using Causal Analysis to Address Hypotheses in the Whidbey Basin 12.03.24
Kathryn Sobocinski and Scott Redman presented Cumulative Effects Evaluation for Salmon Restoration: Merging Data and Using Causal Analysis to Address Hypotheses in the Whidbey Basin. They described ongoing work to address the cumulative effects of restoration in the Whidbey Basin using synthesis methodology rooted in causal analysis. They described the three main elements of the approach—hierarchy of hypotheses, causal analysis, and hierarchy of synthesis—and highlighted some of the analyses and emerging results from this effort on behalf of the Whidbey Basin CEE Research and Science Support Teams.
Next Generation Urban Greening 11.5.24
In the San Francisco Bay Area, green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is being applied at a large scale to comply with stormwater permits and to provide multiple benefits. In San Francisco, in particular, additional benefits of interest include climate resilience, biodiversity support, pollution reduction, and social equity. Melissa Foley and Alicia Gilbreath from the San Francisco Estuary Institute shared their work with GSI and its potential relevance to stormwater mitigation in Puget Sound. Their talk included preliminary results on the effectiveness of different GSI to treat legacy and emerging contaminants.
Using genomics to predict Chinook Salmon responses to climate change 10.01.2024
Climate change is considered a leading threat to the future sustainability of salmon populations. Salmon can respond to short-term climate events using behavioral or physiological means, but long-term adaptation to warming climate requires evolutionary change. Kyle Wellband of Fisheries and Oceans Canada described approaches and results for ongoing projects to assess the adaptive potential of Chinook salmon populations. The results of their work will contribute to understanding the capacity of Chinook salmon to respond to climate change.
Sea level rise resiliency 09.03.2024
Washington Sea Grant works collaboratively with local communities and agency partners to assess and address coastal hazards. Washington Sea Grant staff Ian Miller and Sydney Fishman shared several examples of Washington Sea Grant’s sea level rise resiliency work. Highlighted projects included the Puget Sound Parcel-scale Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment, the USGS Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) flood and groundwater hazards tools, and the Coastal Hazards Resilience Network.
Enhancing climate change planning & adaptive management in marine protected areas 06.04.24
Marine Protected Areas are being deployed globally to protect the Earth’s biodiversity in rapidly changing oceans. Nesting climate change considerations within adaptive Marine Protected Area management and monitoring is becoming a more common approach, and climate change is increasingly addressed in Marine Protected Area planning but implementation gaps remain. Kaia Bryce and Karen Hunter shared highlights from their new research evaluating how robustly climate change is incorporated into Marine Protected Area monitoring plans. The adaptive management cycle is a core climate adaptation strategy, but incomplete in many of these cases.
eDNA in the Salish Sea 05.07.2024
At May’s Roundtable, Ryan Kelly, Director of the eDNA Collaborative highlighted new and recent research using eDNA in the Salish Sea, with an emphasis on management applications. Because all living things make DNA — and DNA sequences can distinguish species from one another — the residual genetic information left behind from the living parts of an ecosystem (environmental DNA, or eDNA) is a goldmine of information for environmental management. Analyzing eDNA lets ecologists work at unprecedented resolution and scale. Within Puget Sound, researchers have used eDNA to track killer whales (Baker et al. 2018), count endangered salmon (Shelton et al. 2019), map different harmful algal species across space and time (Jacobs-Palmer et al. 2021), and track the invasion front of European Green Crab (Keller et al. 2022). Bigger-picture examples include measuring the effect of urbanization on nearshore ecosystems (Kelly et al. 2016), predicting ecological shifts in plankton as a consequence of ocean warming and acidification (Gallego et al. 2020), and commercial fisheries management at large scales (Shelton et al. 2022).
Modeling to Strategically Manage Groundwater and Stream Flows 04.02.2024
As climate change intensifies, more frequent heatwaves, reduced snowpack, changing precipitation patterns, and other ripple effects make it increasingly complex to manage groundwater and stream flows. Our salmon, farmers, and communities rely on these essential water resources. At the roundtable, Philip Murphy and Sono Hashisaki shared an approach being developed by the Suquamish Tribe that uses the existing Kitsap Peninsula MODFLOW groundwater model and EPA’s Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) eco-hydrology model to estimate biomass, stream flow, and water quantity to better inform management decisions. As part of this ongoing work, they introduced initial simulations from the Big Beef Creek watershed, highlighted lessons learned, and reflected on opportunities for the region more broadly.
The Science behind evidence-based hope and strategies for countering climate doomism 03.05.2024
Elin Kelsey’s talk outlined strategies to adopt a hopeful stance in the midst of the climate crisis and the pervasive culture of doomism. Elin’s work focuses on the reciprocal relationship between humans and the rest of nature. The new science of Climate Emotions reveals that our emotions shape our reactions to the climate justice crisis in profound and complex ways. They impact the actions we take, our capacity for resilience and our psychological well-being. The sense of empowerment we feel when we engage with hope from an evidence-based stance increases our capacity for meaningful climate action.
Cumulative effects on Southern Resident Killer Whales and contaminants of emerging concern 2.6.24
Southern Resident Killer Whales are struggling to avoid extinction. Lack of prey (i.e., Chinook salmon), noise and disturbances, and contaminants are three major stressors. Rob Williams from the Oceans Initiative shared updated population model results that explore the cumulative effect of stressors and the population’s viability under different scenarios. In parallel, the University of Washington Tacoma, Western Washington University, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Puyallup Tribe collaborated to identify priority contaminants of emerging concern present in the Salish Sea that have the potential to adversely impact exposed organisms. Andy James and Ruth Sofield shared that the initial effort focused mainly on salmonids, but the team also piloted a framework for understanding the effect of contaminants of emerging concern on Southern Resident Killer Whales.
Update on the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project 12.5.2023
Liz Duffy of Long Live the Kings and Isobel Pearsall of Pacific Salmon Foundation shared an update on the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project. The project was a seven-year collaborative, international research effort focused on identifying factors affecting early marine survival of Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead in the Salish Sea. The evidence from more than 90 individual studies supports the conclusion that, while no single factor is responsible, changes in food supply and an increase in predators are the primary factors driving the decline. Local factors including habitat degradation, contaminants, and disease also impact salmon health and survival, while climate change is an overarching challenge compounding these factors.
Emerging salmon science with Fisheries and Oceans Canada 11.7.2023
The story of coho salmon in the Strait of Georgia is complex. Historically it supported a very lucrative recreational fishery. However, the fishery collapsed in the 1990s due to a combination of factors including changes in distribution as well as declines in marine survival. Chrys Neville (Fisheries & Oceans Canada) examined recent changes in trends in the coho salmon population within the strait and possible factors associated with these changes. Tanya Brown (Fisheries & Oceans Canada) then showcased the work that DFO has being carrying out in collaboration with a number of First Nations, ENGOs, Streamkeeper organizations, and other external partners to identify and characterize 6PPD-quinone toxic hotspots in salmon habitat in British Columbia, Canada.
Chrys’ Slides | Tanya’s Slides
Climate-ready fisheries & modeling 10.3.2023
Heather Welch (researcher at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center and UC Santa Cruz) discussed how modeling can potentially allow fisheries management and regulations to proactively and dynamically adapt to climate impacts. In the new paper, researchers predicted the change in habitat and by extension jurisdiction for 14 species of ecological, cultural, and commercial importance during recent heatwaves. Marine species have and will continue to move in response to climate change, irrespective of jurisdictional borders. This sort of real-time modeling can help fishers find valuable species while also avoiding endangered species like sea turtles.
