The Biodiversity of Commencement Bay: It’s Alive!
Aug 31, 2017
Bonnie Becker, Sherri Duncan and Nathalie Hamel
The Biodiversity of Commencement Bay: It’s Alive!

As we clean Commencement Bay, life is returning to its shores. We’ll explore the whales, birds, fish, and invertebrates of our local waters and discuss the future of biodiversity in Tacoma waters. En=joy the insight from these three experts. 

Bonnie J. Becker is an Associate Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Washington Tacoma. With her students, she studies commercially and ecologically important shellfish in the Salish Sea. She is interested in the small but important invertebrates living in the mud at the bottom of Commencement Bay.  

Nathalie Hamel coordinates the Puget Sound Indicators program at the Puget Sound Partnership. The Puget Sound Partnership is a "backbone organization" working in support of the recovery of the health of Puget Sound. As part of the Science Team, Nathalie works with scientists throughout the region to report on the status and trends of the ecosystem, from water, all the way up to whales!

Sherrie Duncan is owner of Sky Environmental, a small, woman-owned business specializing in natural resource management and conservation.  Sherrie’s career as a fisheries biologist and restoration ecologist has taken her full circle, starting in her childhood home of Puyallup, ranging as far as Southeast Alaska, and returning to Tacoma in the Puyallup Watershed.