This is the body of water in the Western Washington/British Columbia region of the Pacific Coast.
https://www.seadocsociety.org/how-the-salish-sea-got-its-name#:~:text=As%20well%2C%20the%20indigenous%20people,shores%20of%20our%20inland%20sea.
But what to call our inland Sea?
I knew that the tribes around our inland sea from both British Columbia and Washington State all shared a historical connection with the Coast Salish language. I also knew that the indigenous people occupying our inland sea were different from those living on the North West Coast of Washington State and those of the West Coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. As well, the indigenous people of the tribes living to the north on the British Columbia coast differed from those with a link to Salish languages. The name Salish Sea acknowledges the first peoples to live on the shores of our inland sea.
There are two ways to have a name formally adopted in the State of Washington. The first is by legislative decision, the approach taken by the government of Washington State in forming the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. The second is to have the Washington State Board of Geographical Names, a then committee in the State’s Department of Natural Resources, formally adopt a name. (The committee was abolished as part of the State’s budget cuts of 2009/2010 but has since been restored). In 1989 I submitted an application to the Board of Geographical Names requesting that the estuarine ecosystem consisting of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia be named the Salish Sea. At that time the Board judged that the name did not have popular usage and should be considered experimental and decided to not further consider the application at that time.
The Salish Sea name however, had its supporters. Those who live in the Washington State San Juan and the British Columbia Gulf Islands supported the idea of being part of the Salish Sea. The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor and the whale watching industry with their interest in Orca whales saw the usefulness of a single name for the whale’s summer home. Land use planners in the Gulf islands used the Salish Sea as a framework in which to better understand the land use in their islands, Educators that were aware of the importance of ecosystems saw the value of the name; the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve championed the name in its education programs. Songs about the Salish Sea were composed and books written. Over time the popular support for the Salish Sea name continued to grow.
Somewhat more slowly the Salish Sea name came to the attention of natural resource managers interested in problems that did not recognize the international boundary of the 49th parallel. Scientific studies directed to a better understanding of the unified estuarine ecosystem continued during and beyond the 1980’s, although government agencies did not immediately adopt the Salish Sea name. A review of what we knew of the estuarine ecosystem published in 1994 referred to the inland sea as the “Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and the Juan de Fuca Strait”. The governments of British Columbia and Washington State increasingly recognized the efforts and importance of the natural resource managers and made agreements to facilitate the sharing of information on transboundary issues. Periodic conferences brought together natural resource scientists and managers interested in transboundary issues and these efforts needed a name in order to define the inland marine ecosystem as an entity. The name used for these conferences was the “Georgia Basin Puget Sound Ecosystem”.
Essentially it says the the State of Washinton and the province of British Columbia, Canada named it.
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