Cushman (1925) reported on a few samples collected near the Queen Charlotte Islands. This is the earliest report on modern foraminifera from this region. The work of Cockbain (1963) bears on the Strait of Georgia (between Vancouver Island and the mainland) where oceanographic conditions are restricted, not open marine. Saidova's (1975) extensive study on the benthic foraminifera of the Pacific Ocean includes many samples from off the Canadian coast. The same author (Saidova 2000) later reported on benthic foraminiferal communities off western North America. Studies by Bergen and O'Neil (1979) and Echols and Armentrout (1980) are more localized and situated off the Alaska Panhandle; despite the distance to our sampling sites, the assemblages are very similar to those we see in scattered grab samples from Queen Charlotte Sound and those reported in the Holocene part of piston cores from the same region (Patterson 1993; Patterson et al. 1995; Guilbault et al. 1997).

Quantitative studies of foraminifera from Jurassic sponge reefs are difficult because they often cannot be extracted from the sediment and fossil matrix. Even though forms such as Vinelloidea, Bullopora, Placopsilina, Tolypammina and Thurammina have been widely observed in association with the reef sponges in central and southern Europe, only a few authors have made a quantitative estimate of the species present by etching silicified foraminifera out of the limestone (Haeusler 1890; Feifel 1930; Frentzen 1944; Seibold and Seibold 1960a, 1960b; Oesterle 1968; Wagenplast 1972; Schmalzriedt 1991; Munk 1994). Some typical calcareous taxa of these sponge reef dwellers (Vinelloidea, Bullopora) probably did not silicify since they are never reported in the etched fraction; they are known to be associated with sponges only from thin sections and from unprocessed rock samples. Other important studies are by Gaillard (1983) and Schmid (1996). Gaillard (1983) made a synthetic study of all aspects of life in and around the Upper Jurassic sponge reefs of the French Jura, while Schmid (1996) carried out an in-depth thin-section study of the encrusting organisms found in and on Upper Jurassic reefs in central and southern Europe, including foraminifera.