Salish Sea Dreaming made a five-minute piece for the planetarium dome. It was shown at the SCI_ART Creative Collisions Open Dome in the Star Theatre at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Vancouver, on Sunday 4 October 2026, as part of SCI_ART 2026 (MOVE37XR).
Salish Sea Dreaming
A collective work by the Salish Sea Dreaming team, with lead artist Pravin Pillay.
Footage: Moonfish Media.
Score: Matt Robertson, from herring data prepared by Shawn Anderson and Eve Marenghi. It traces the shape of the BC herring catch history since 1888 and follows the recorded roe-fishery catch from 1972.
The map shows where herring spawned in Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s records since 1951, and where herring were before those records, from archaeology and history.
Ocean currents: SalishSeaCast (UBC). Satellite imagery: NASA. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The dreaming imagery was made with Autolume (Metacreation Lab, SFU), a generative AI tool, and comes to rest on photographs shared openly by iNaturalist observers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Each being forms as a figure of Coast Salish design elements: circle, crescents, trigon.
Moonfish Media — Underwater Footage
Aerial drone footage: Moonfish Media
For about eleven seconds (3:31 to 3:43) one window overhead shows a short clip of a cosmic whale among the stars. Its makers and source are being confirmed, and its credit will be added here.
Matt Robertson — sonic composition
The pitch and pulse trace the shape of the BC herring catch history from 1888, one note per record (mostly 5 years apart before 1967, yearly after), and follow the recorded roe-fishery catch from 1972. The tone follows the coast-wide herring spawn index.
Herring data package (March 2026): Shawn Anderson and Eve Marenghi
Catch 1972 onward: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Herring Roe Fishery Catch Data.
Spawn 1951–2025: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Pacific Herring Spawn Index.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
McKechnie, I., Lepofsky, D., Moss, M. L., Butler, V. L., Orchard, T. J., Coupland, G., Foster, F., Caldwell, M., & Lertzman, K. (2014). Archaeological data provide alternative hypotheses on Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) distribution, abundance, and variability. PNAS 111(9). doi:10.1073/pnas.1316072111
Morin, J., Evans, A. B., & Efford, M. (2023). The Rise of Vancouver and the Collapse of Forage Fish: A Story of Urbanization and the Destruction of an Aquatic Ecosystem on the Salish Sea (1885–1920 CE). Human Ecology 51(2), 303–322. doi:10.1007/s10745-023-00398-w
Keddie, G. (2023). A Lekwungen Herring Fishing site in Esquimalt Harbour: A Unique photograph in the Collection of the Royal B.C. Museum.
Coastline © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
SalishSeaCast model (UBC Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences), dataset ubcSSfDepthAvgdCurrents1h, downloaded 24 September 2026.
Soontiens, N., Allen, S., Latornell, D., Le Souef, K., Machuca, I., Paquin, J.-P., Lu, Y., Thompson, K., Korabel, V. (2016). Storm surges in the Strait of Georgia simulated with a regional model. Atmosphere-Ocean 54, 1–21.
Soontiens, N. and Allen, S. (2017). Modelling sensitivities to mixing and advection in a sill-basin estuarine system. Ocean Modelling 112, 17–32.
NASA Blue Marble: Next Generation, shaded relief with bathymetry (NASA Earth Observatory), via NASA GIBS.
We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
The dreaming imagery is generative AI imagery made with Autolume (Metacreation Lab, SFU).
Each being forms as a figure of Coast Salish design elements (circle, crescents, trigon).
These are training photographs of the dreaming model, shown cropped and graded. The dreaming imagery condenses into them and dissolves out of them. In the web of life, the eelgrass, herring eggs, murre, humpbacks and orca each show over the model’s own picture of them.
Each photo’s licence was re-read on its live record on 5 October 2026.
A collective work by the Salish Sea Dreaming team, with lead artist Pravin Pillay (Lead Artist & Immersive Field Composer: creative direction, system orchestration).
The whole team, with each person’s role, and the organizational partners are listed on About this project.
A later cut of the piece, not the one shown on 4 October, adds the footage and photographs below. It does not show the photographs of the herring school, the orca or the Chinook listed above.
Footage
Other webs: training photographs of the dreaming model, shown cropped and graded in the sky of other webs.