Sometimes mainland First Nations crossed Hecate Strait to Haida Gwaii, such as a Nisga'a war party from the lower Nass River, which crossed the strait in a retaliatory raid after an attack by Haida Ravens from Hiellen, which took Nisga'a slaves back to Hiellen.

[2] During the last ice age, the seafloor in this area was a wide coastal plain stretching south to the Olympic Peninsula and including what is now Queen Charlotte Sound.

[6] The Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound Glass Sponge Reefs Marine Protected Area was designated by the Fisheries and Oceans Canada in February 2017.

The MPA is located in the Northern Shelf bioregion of the Pacific Region, southeast of Haida Gwaii, North and South of the entrance to the Douglas Channel.

[7] The four reef complexes in the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound discontinuously cover an area of about 1,000 km2, and are located in glacial troughs between 140 m and 240 m deep.