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Map outlining the boundaries of the Salish Sea (solid black line), from the mountain tops to the marine water, showing terrestrial topography, marine bathymetry, and the ''arbitrary'' international border (white-gray dotted line) separating the Puget Sound Basin (United States) to the south and the Georgia Basin (Canada) to the north.
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Like other coastal zones around the world, the inland sea ecosystem of Washington (USA) and British Columbia (Canada), an area known as the Salish Sea, is changing under pressure from a growing human population, conversion of native forest and shoreline habitat to urban development, toxic contamination of sediments and species, and overharvest of r...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... inland sea of Washington State (USA) and British Columbia (Canada) is recognized as an international treasure ( Fraser et al. 2006). Corresponding to the ancestral home of the Coast Salish people and often referred to as the Salish Sea ( Fraser et al. 2006), the ecosystem stretches from Olympia in the south to Campbell River in the north and extends from the crest of the surrounding mountain ranges (Olympic, Cascade, Vancouver Island, and Coast Range) to the deepest part of the marine waters ( Figure 1). The area south of the international border is called the Puget Sound Basin, and to the north, the Georgia Basin ( Figure 1). ...
Context 2
... to the ancestral home of the Coast Salish people and often referred to as the Salish Sea ( Fraser et al. 2006), the ecosystem stretches from Olympia in the south to Campbell River in the north and extends from the crest of the surrounding mountain ranges (Olympic, Cascade, Vancouver Island, and Coast Range) to the deepest part of the marine waters ( Figure 1). The area south of the international border is called the Puget Sound Basin, and to the north, the Georgia Basin ( Figure 1). Thousands of streams and rivers drain 7470 km of coastline into 16,925 square kilometers of marine water (1:250,000 scale World vector Shoreline and TEOPO2 topographic/ bathymetric GIS grid). ...
Context 3
... the connectivity and linkages between seemingly unrelated species and ecosystems is key to suc- cessful restoration. Like most ecosystems, the factors determining the fate of the Salish Sea extend hundreds of kilometers from the sea to the crest of the mountains that surround these waters ( Figure 1). For example, the amount and configuration of impervious surfaces (e.g., concrete parking lots, roads) and harvested forests impact the biotic integrity of streams feeding into the Salish Sea ( Alberti et al. 2007), which, in turn, affects the health of the entire ecosystem. ...
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Citations
... Understanding these effects on N. luetkeana is important as it is a foundational species that provides habitat and serves as a food source for many marine shes, mammals, and invertebrate species in the Sargassum muticum is an invasive species and a potential competitor to native kelps, including N. leutkeana (Britton-Simmons 2004; Gaydos et al. 2008). On the west coast of North America, S. muticum is now found from Alaska to Mexico, overlapping in range with the distributions of N. leutkeana and P. gracilis. ...
Graceful kelp crabs ( Pugettia gracilis ) are abundant consumers in shallow subtidal ecosystems of the Salish Sea. These dynamic habitats are currently experiencing multiple changes including invasion by non-native seaweeds and warming due to climate change. However, little is known about P. gracilis’ foraging ecology, therefore we investigated their feeding preferences between native and invasive food sources, as well as feeding rates at elevated temperatures to better assess their role in changing coastal food webs. To quantify crab feeding preferences, we collected P. gracilis from San Juan Island, WA and conducted no-choice and choice experiments with two food sources: the native kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, and the invasive seaweed, Sargassum muticum . In no-choice experiments, P. gracilis ate equal amounts of N. luetkeana and S. muticum . However, in choice experiments, P. gracilis preferred N. luetkeana over S. muticum . To test effects of warming on these feeding rates, we exposed P. gracilis to ambient (11.5 ± 1.3°C) or elevated (19.5 ± 1.8°C) temperature treatments and measured consumption of the preferred food type, N. luetkeana. Crabs exposed to elevated temperatures ate significantly more than those in the ambient treatment. Our study demonstrates the diet flexibility of P. gracilis , suggesting they may be able to exploit increasing populations of invasive S. muticum in the Salish Sea . Warming ocean temperatures may also prompt P. gracilis to increase feeding, exacerbating harmful impacts on N. luetkeana, which is already vulnerable to warming and invasive competitors.
... From 2001 through 2018, the academically based marine conservation group (the SeaDoc Society/UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine) used private donations to competitively fund 62 research projects. The goal was to fund science that would enable managers and policy-makers to better design a healthy Salish Sea, a discrete 16,925 km 2 marine ecosystem (Gaydos et al., 2008). ...
The foundational objective of conservation science is to maximize benefits to people and to biodiversity, but ensuring research translates into conservation action is not straightforward. We, retrospectively, evaluated nearly 20 years of small-scale, competitively funded research to identify parameters most closely associated with science that produced conservation benefits. All projects were funded to help improve the health of marine and coastal flora and fauna within the Salish Sea but only 40% resulted in a positive conservation outcome. Analysis showed that projects that collaborated with personnel from government agencies, and prioritized networking and stakeholder engagement before, during and after the research, were more likely to result in a conservation action. Publication of a peer-reviewed article did not increase the chance of success. Credible research that includes government collaborators and prioritizes networking and stakeholder engagement increases the probability that scientific findings will inform conservation management.
... The San Juan Archipelago in the Salish Sea has a complex bathymetry influenced by previous glaciation and provides habitat for what is likely a very significant number of PSL (Greene et al., , 2020Baker et al., 2021b, In Review). The region is characterized by strong currents, significant oceanic inputs and upwelling (Thomson and Ware, 1996) and is also important habitat to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, and fishes, many of which rely on PSL as a prey resource (Gaydos et al., 2008;Gaydos and Pearson, 2011;Pietsch and Orr, 1999). ...
Forage fish and fish associated with particular benthic habitats (e.g., rockfishes, sand eels, sand lances) may be particularly difficult to assess through standard survey methodologies. Stereo-cameras, video, and automated visual data may serve as useful complementary tools to provide insight into the dynamics of these species. Visual methods may be used not only to estimate abundance and distribution, but also to inform important biological metrics and life history attributes. We explored the application of these methods to assess Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus), a forage fish associated with benthic sediments, using a combination of directed observations from a manned submersible and quantitative analysis of fixed image footage obtained with a stereo-camera. This research provides a better understanding of how in situ observations and automated image analysis might complement other methods to estimate fish abundance, distribution, habitat, and behavior. Visual data were compared to data collected via directed sampling using physical extraction methods at the same site in the same year. Submersible observations provided new insights on the physical conditions and habitat. Visual observations confirmed wavefield morphologies previously identified through multibeam acoustic imagery and measured attributes relevant to the physical oceanography of the water column above this benthic habitat feature. Visual observations also informed understanding of light penetration, relevant to diurnal cues for seasonal progression and diel vertical migration and foraging. Submersible observations provided insights into abundance, schooling dynamics, and behavioral attributes, including avoidance in response to physical disturbance and aggregation in presence of artificial light. Quantitative analysis of stereo-camera data in center-edge and north-south transects determined that fish abundance and length distribution was relatively uniform throughout this particular benthic habitat. Estimates of measurement error associated with stereo-cameras were calculated and correction factors identified. Mean lengths estimated in visual data and in physical specimens were closely matched, though variance in visual data measurements was far greater. This error was reduced when filtering data on the basis of orthogonal position or incidence angle relative to the camera. Our research provides important insights to the presence, distribution, abundance, and movement of Pacific sand lance within benthic sand wavefield habitats. Our research also provides insight to the applications, opportunities, and constraints to observation-based sampling methods, including the use of manned submersibles and automated stereo-cameras.
... The scoping mostly considered the outer boundary of the conservation zone, which could have been larger. Options for conservation measures beyond this are thus fairly limited where 1) only the exclusion of other non-Indigenous users is a possible avenue for recovery of culturally important species and ecocultural conservation as shown by Frid et al. [111] and/or 2) collaboration with other conservation/user groups/governmental/transboundary initiatives might support this Songhees undertaking further [112,113]. Smaller protected areas that are locally managed are considered a good precursor to scale up conservation actions across networks such as in Oceania or the Coral Triangle [95,99]. ...
The biodiversity crisis is paralleled by a decline in the ability of Indigenous peoples to practice traditional livelihoods, cultures and languages. The world’s oceans and coastal communities face such threats, prompting increasing interest in establishing conservation measures. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is a structured approach to establish conservation measures with clearly defined objectives, such as protected areas. Many Indigenous peoples are resurging to reclaim and protect some of their traditional lands and revitalize their cultures as rights holders. SCP goals and Indigenous goals could thus align. This research documents the Indigenous-led marine conservation planning process of the Songhees Nation to reclaim and assert stewardship around the Tl’ches archipelago near Victoria, Canada. We compare the Songhees marine conservation planning approach to SCP approaches. The Songhees approach showed similarities to SCP in the initial scoping phase of the marine conservation planning, in the review and compiling of existing data prior to the collection of data as well as the focus on focal species. The Songhees approach to marine conservation planning also differed from SCP as it included one zone only, did not involve any other stakeholders, and tried to account for the whole social-ecological system in one process step. This research provides useful insights and a guidance to help interested Indigenous communities worldwide to conduct their own marine conservation planning.
... Understanding the connectivity of organisms and habitats in this region continues to develop (Gaydos et al. 2009). Once considerable migrations of Pacific salmon with diverse life-histories brought marine-derived nutrients to watersheds (Ben-David et al. 1998;Gustafson et al. 2007). ...
This report synthesizes information on past, current, and emerging stressors within the Salish Sea estuarine ecosystem. The Salish Sea is a complex waterbody shared by Coast Salish Tribes and First Nations, Canada, and the United States. It is defined by multiple freshwater inputs and marine water from the Pacific Ocean that mix in two primary basins, Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia. Human impacts are multifaceted and extensive within the Salish Sea, with a regional population of almost 9 million people. Population growth has driven urbanization and development, which in turn has triggered structural changes to the landscape and seascape. Meanwhile, the growing effects of climate change are fundamentally altering physical and biological processes. The report describes the most pervasive and damaging impacts affecting the transboundary ecosystem, recognizing that some are generated locally while others are the locally realized impacts from global-scale changes in climate, oceans, land use, and biodiversity. The Salish Sea is under relentless pressure from an accelerating convergence of global and local environmental stressors and the cumulative impacts of 150 years of development and alteration of our watersheds and seascape. Some of these impacts are well understood but many remain unknown or are difficult to predict. While strong science is critical to understanding the ecosystem, the report provides a spectrum of ideas and opportunities for how governments, organizations, and individuals can work together to meet the needs of science and science-driven management that will sustain the Salish Sea estuarine ecosystem.
... The lack of spatial trends in resistance may reflect the level of sampling, spatial use by the animals sampled, or the complex state of ecosystem connectivity and estuarine exchange flow within the Salish Sea and its coastal shoreline. Connectivity is especially vital in coastal systems where energy and biota are constantly moving and exchanging among ecosystem components [64,65]. Systematic environmental sampling for antibiotic resistance in bacteria throughout the Salish Sea would provide greater insight into determining if antibiotic resistance patterns in marine wildlife are representative of their habitat. ...
The pervasive use of antibiotics in human medicine, veterinary medicine, and agriculture
can result in a significant increase in the spread and environmental persistence of antibiotic resistance in marine ecosystems. This study describes the presence and distribution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Salish Sea harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) and harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) and evaluates species, age class, and geographic differences in resistance patterns. Isolates from 95 dead-stranded animals (74 seals/21 porpoises) were tested for resistance to a suite of 15 antibiotics. Of the 95 sampled, 85 (89%) (67 seals/18 porpoises) successfully yielded 144 isolates, with 37% resistant to at least one antibiotic and 26% multi-drug resistant (24% and 39% of seal and porpoise
isolates, respectively). Overall, and by study region, porpoises were significantly more likely to harbor resistant organisms compared to seals. Significant differences between age classes were noted for the antibiotics amoxicillin, cephalexin, and cefovecin. Overall isolate resistance was significantly greater in porpoises than seals for several individual antibiotics. Multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) indices greater than 0.2 were observed in 55% of multi-drug resistant isolates, suggesting seal and porpoise exposure to anthropogenic pollution. The relatively high and disparate prevalence of antibiotic resistance in these common, but ecologically dissimilar, marine mammals reflects a
potentially large environmental pool of antibiotic resistant organisms in the Salish Sea or inherently different resistance gene patterns between the two species.
... The coastline of British Columbia (BC), Canada, is home to diverse and plentiful marine life, including many globally important staging, molting, and wintering areas for waterbirds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway (e.g., Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas in Canada: https://www.ibacanada.com/). The Salish Sea supports 172 bird species that are dependent on the region's habitats, of which 72 are highly dependent on intertidal and marine habitats (Gaydos et al. 2008, Gaydos andPearson 2011). This coastline also supports large urban populations, specifically in the south (e.g., Greater Vancouver Region), and maintains a strong economy based on ocean-based industries, which contribute $11 billion (8%) to the provincial gross domestic product (Stocks and Vandeborne 2017). ...
Waterbirds are often used as indicators of ecosystem function across broad spatial and temporal scales. Resolving which species are declining and the ecological characteristics they have in common can offer insights into ecosystem changes and their underlying mechanisms. Using 20 years of citizen science data collected by the British Columbia Coastal Waterbird Survey, we examine species-specific trends in abundance of 50 species in the Salish Sea and 37 species along the outer Pacific Ocean coast that we considered
to form the core wintering coastal bird community of British Columbia, Canada. Further, we explore whether ecological commonalities
increase the likelihood of a species undergoing declines by testing the hypotheses that waterbird abundance trends are influenced by
dietary specialization and migration distance to breeding grounds. Results suggest that most populations are stable (i.e., temporal trends
are not significant) in both the Salish Sea (36 of 50 spp.) and Pacific coast (32 of 37 spp.) regions. Twelve species displayed significant
decline trends in the Salish Sea, whereas two had significant increases. Along the Pacific coast, only three species displayed significant decline trends, and two significant increases. This result is corroborated by guild-specific trends indicating that waterbirds occupying the Salish Sea are faring significantly worse than those residing along the outer coastal regions, almost irrespective of dietary specialization or migration distance. Our results provide evidence that differential environmental pressures between the inner and outer coastal regions may be causing overall loss of wintering waterbirds within, or abundance shifts away from, the Salish Sea. Potential mechanisms responsible for these observed patterns are discussed, including environmental (e.g., climate) and human-induced (e.g., nutrient and chemical pollution) pressures. Collaborative, inter-disciplinary research priorities to help understand these mechanisms are suggested
... Marine ecosystems are faced with many threats such as climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, increased shipping traffic (Myers and Worm, 2003;Worm et al., 2006;Ban et al., 2010;Kroeker et al., 2013;Seebens et al., 2013;Cheng et al., 2019), and therefore resource managers and policy-makers alike need information about the state of a system in order to formulate meaningful management direction and have a baseline against which to assess it (Gaydos et al., 2008;Berkes, 2015). Ecological baselines can be established through systematic ecological surveying or through other methods, such as interviews with users of the marine environment (Moller et al., 2004;Eckert et al., 2018). ...
Marine ecosystems are facing unprecedented threats. Baseline information about the state of ecosystems is needed to address these threats. Ecosystem assessments can be completed over varying scales through different methodologies or a combination of them. Despite these many technologies, most marine environments lack comprehensive habitat assessments. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) provide an opportunity to conduct small- to meso scale ecological surveying without some of the constraints of commonly used methodologies such as scuba. The development of cost-effective models of ROVs broadens the accessibility of this technology to many different user groups. We applied the Trident ROV as part of a community-based research project to conduct marine conservation planning around the Tl’ches archipelago with the Songhees Nation in Victoria, British Columbia. We had two main objectives: (1) We evaluated the marine ecological data collection capabilities for the Trident OpenROV and (2) our surveys aimed to complete a systematic benthos classification and document the algal community as well as document a baseline of Songhees culturally important species. We also discuss evaluated the ability of the Trident to provide high resolution ecological data to inform a marine use planning process. We found the Trident to be a capable tool to conduct systematic marine surveying despite some limitations such as low maneuverability in moderate to high current environments and dense kelp areas. We were able to document 14 of 25 culturally important species and 28 species of algae and seaweeds. We were also able to identify highly stressed environments suited for future restoration efforts. The application of a mini low cost ROV to inform marine use planning generated high-resolution data that enabled the Songhees Nation to confirm the whole archipelago warrants protection and necessitates the exclusion of non-Indigenous user groups. Documenting and having a permanent record of the substrate, algal cover, and culturally important species composition around the seascape Tl’ches could serve as one reference point for the Songhees Nation to establish a monitoring system.
... Within the Salish Sea, a 16,925 km 2 inland sea shared by Washington (United States) and British Columbia (Canada) (Gaydos et al., 2008), the harbor seal population (totaling around 50,000 individuals) has been at equilibrium for over two decades (Jeffries et al., 2003;DFO, 2010;Majewski and Ellis, 2019). Preexploitation harbor seal population size in the Salish Sea is unknown, but after the cessation of bounty programs in the early 1960s and the adoption of protective measures in the early 1970s, harbor seal numbers on both sides of the international border increased exponentially until reaching presumed carrying capacity in the mid-1990s. ...
The harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardii) population in the Salish Sea has been at equilibrium since the mid-1990s. This stable population of marine mammals resides relatively close to shore near a large human population and offers a novel opportunity to evaluate whether disease acts in a density-dependent manner to limit population growth. We conducted a retrospective analysis of harbor seal stranding and necropsy findings in the San Juan Islands sub-population to assess age-related stranding trends and causes of mortality. Between January 01, 2002 and December 31, 2018, we detected 882 harbor seals that stranded and died in San Juan County and conducted necropsies on 244 of these animals to determine primary and contributing causes of death. Age-related seasonal patterns of stranded animals were evident, with pups found in the summer, weaned pups primarily recovered during fall, and adults and sub-adults recovered in summer and fall. Pups were the most vulnerable to mortality (64% of strandings). Pups predominantly died of nutritional causes (emaciation) (70%), whereas sub-adults and adults presented primarily with clinical signs and gross lesions of infectious disease (42%) and with non-anthropogenic trauma (27%). Primary causes of weaned pup mortality were distributed equally among nutritional, infectious, non-anthropogenic trauma, and anthropogenic trauma categories. Nutritional causes of mortality in pups were likely related to limitations in mid- and late-gestational maternal nutrition, post-partum mismothering, or maternal separation possibly related to human disturbance. Infectious causes were contributing factors in 33% of pups dying of nutritional causes (primarily emaciation–malnutrition syndrome), suggesting an interaction between poor nutritional condition and enhanced susceptibility to infectious diseases. Additional primary causes of harbor seal mortality were related to congenital disorders, predation, human interaction, and infections, including zoonotic and multidrug-resistant pathogens. Bottom-up nutritional limitations for pups, in part possibly related to human disturbance, as well as top-down predatory influences (likely under-represented through strandings) and infectious disease, are important regulators of population growth in this stable, recovered marine mammal population.
... Marine predators, particularly migratory species, are especially susceptible to a multitude of human stressors (Maxwell et al., 2013) and research on the Southern Residents has shown that they travel considerably, with their known range spanning from south-east Alaska to central California . Over recent decades, killer whale habitat in the Salish Sea has been subject to radical change, reflecting strong anthropogenic impacts from continuous human expansion in the area (Gaydos et al., 2008;Johannessen and Macdonald, 2009), which have increased the influence of multiple local stressors on what is historically a hotspot of SRKW distribution from spring through autumn (Olson et al., 2018). ...
Background: The endangered population of “Southern Resident” killer whales (SRKWs) is small, reproductively isolated, and occurs in the eastern North Pacific. Since the population underwent severe historical depletion in the 1960s and 1970s, increased knowledge about the animals and the ongoing effects of multiple human actions on them and their habitat has been gained. This has raised serious conservation concerns and the population is struggling to recover from more recent declines.
Objective: I investigate how human actions, and one of the major identified threats (i.e. pollution & contaminants) in particular, have been affecting the SRKWs, to provide a basis for future research and management.
Methods: I completed a literature search for peer-reviewed studies and key grey documents directly concerned with anthropogenic threats to the SRKWs. Titles, abstracts and full-texts were evaluated against a priori defined input criteria, and a systematic map for all relevant studies was created, categorizing them according to year of publication, study type or type of anthropogenic threat.
Results: The searches resulted in 71 studies and 26 grey documents that were considered relevant and included in the systematic map. Most studies (22) focused on noise and disturbance associated to vessel traffic, followed by pollution and contaminants (18) and prey availability (12).
Discussion: SRKWs are long-lived top predators, that are highly vulnerable to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which bioaccumulate and biomagnify in marine food-webs. Several crucial studies I identified showed the SRKWs to be among the most contaminated marine mammals in the world, with POP levels far exceeding known thresholds for adverse health effects in other marine mammals. Investigating the systematic map and wider scientific literature, it becomes clear that SRKWs face significant toxicological risks and that high levels of pollutants, in combination with other threats which likely exacerbate each other, may be keeping the population from increasing at the rate required for recovery.
