Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
For around thirty million years, basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) have filter-fed on plankton across Earth’s ocean. They once gathered in aggregations of hundreds (some estimate thousands) on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and individuals were common throughout the Salish Sea until an eradication program sponsored by the Canadian government in the 1950s-60s drove the species to near extinction. This talk provides an overview of the historical population data and changing cultural attitudes toward basking sharks in the Salish Sea and greater Northeast Pacific, and lays out the possibilities for conservation and recovery.
The Environmental Speaker Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30pm in Academic Instructional Center West, room 204. Join us at WWU or online on Zoom!
Featuring:
Kelly Bushnell, PhD
Kelly’s research and teaching focus on the historical and cultural dimensions of marine ecology. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area but spent every summer in a cabin with no electricity or running water on a small island in the Salish Sea, where she developed a passionate curiosity about marine ecosystems and how humans live with our one global ocean.
Her PhD at the University of London considered how depictions of marine life in the nineteenth-century unsettled British colonialism. Since then, she’s taught and conducted research at sea and on multiple coasts, including as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Ocean and Coastal Studies Program and Research Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Outside the classroom or the archive, you can find her underwater in the Salish Sea all year round. Kelly is also a Salish Sea Institute Fellow.
Publications and syllabi at kellypbushnell.com.
Brought to you by:
Salish Sea Institute, College of the Environment, The Foundation for WWU & Alumni
For around thirty million years, basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) have filter-fed on plankton across Earth’s ocean. They once gathered in aggregations of hundreds (some estimate thousands) on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and individuals were common throughout the Salish Sea until an eradication program sponsored by the Canadian government in the 1950s-60s drove the species to near extinction. This talk provides an overview of the historical population data and changing cultural attitudes toward basking sharks in the Salish Sea and greater Northeast Pacific, and lays out the possibilities for conservation and recovery.
The Environmental Speaker Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30pm in Academic Instructional Center West, room 204. Join us at WWU or online on Zoom!
Featuring:
Kelly Bushnell, PhD
Kelly’s research and teaching focus on the historical and cultural dimensions of marine ecology. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area but spent every summer in a cabin with no electricity or running water on a small island in the Salish Sea, where she developed a passionate curiosity about marine ecosystems and how humans live with our one global ocean.
Her PhD at the University of London considered how depictions of marine life in the nineteenth-century unsettled British colonialism. Since then, she’s taught and conducted research at sea and on multiple coasts, including as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Ocean and Coastal Studies Program and Research Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Outside the classroom or the archive, you can find her underwater in the Salish Sea all year round. Kelly is also a Salish Sea Institute Fellow.
Publications and syllabi at kellypbushnell.com.
Brought to you by:
Salish Sea Institute, College of the Environment, The Foundation for WWU & Alumni
