Now that the chairs and tables are stacked and the organizing committee has long since cued the music, the work of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference is just starting for us. Over the next year, the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound will be reporting some of the stories, highlights and important takeaways from the conference.

Even with 11 writers on the ground, we couldn’t see every presentation or poster, but that wasn’t our goal. The conference will prepare a complete proceeding of abstracts and summaries, but we will tell some of the stories. We’ll look beyond the spreadsheets and the graphs, beyond the darkened conference rooms and PowerPoint presentations. We’ll take you to the Sea of Glass and Protection Island. We’ll look at the Salish Sea’s “charismatic megaflora” and its mean little kelp crabs. We’ll fly over the waters of Puget Sound or listen to harbor porpoises, all the time providing the most relevant information about Puget Sound and Salish Sea restoration.

You might see this as the very first Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference magazine. We think it will be a must-read for anyone who attended the conference, and for those who simply want to know where the latest research is heading. These are your stories. Look for monthly articles from SSEC14 in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound starting this July.