SAFS is hiring for three tenure-track faculty jobs, which have been posted on interfolio. See the links below for more information and applications for each position.
Congressional staff from the State of Washington gathered for a UW research drone demonstration.
Demonstrating the basics of how drones fly and collect data during marine ecosystem research, Corey Garza, SAFS Professor and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the UW College of the Environment, shared with the group how his team uses drones to study the marine ecosystems that make up Puget Sound and further afield. From kelp forests to wetlands, drones are a critical piece of technology used to research marine landscapes such as these.
Part of a broader effort to demonstrate the breadth of coastal research being conducted within the UW College of the Environment, staffers also got the chance to try their hand at flying the drone as part of the demonstration.
In attendance were the following staffers: Sean Connell (Rep. Larsen), Steven Klausner (Sen. Murray), Amy Linhardt (Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez), Sara Develle (Rep. Strickland), Courtney Acoff (Rep. Kilmer), Kei Fujisawa (Rep. Schrier), Patrick Eckroth (Sen. Cantwell), Hanna Albert (Sen. Cantwell), Hunter Wade (Rep. Schrier), Ryan Blue (Rep. Kilmer).
Corey Garza
Staffers got to try their hand at flying at drone during the event.
For the demonstration, Corey showed how drones are supporting shellfish aquaculture in Washington as part of a collaborative new project with the Pacific Shellfish Institute, of which Taylor Shellfish is one of the partners. Present at the demonstration were: UW Marine Biology undergrad Ashley Rendon, UW College of the Environment Associate Dean for Administration Stephanie Harrington, Deputy Director of Federal Relations for UW Sang Han, Katie Houle and Bobbi Hudson from the Pacific Shellfish Institute, and Bill Dewey from Taylor Shellfish.
Interested in other stories featuring UW drone research?
It’s all in the name: the Alaska Salmon Program. Each year, students from the University of Washington head up to southwest Alaska, part of a 75-year-old program dedicated to all aspects of the ecology and evolution of Pacific salmon in the watersheds of western Alaska, the Bering Sea, and the Gulf of Alaska.
Ryan Luvera
During 2024, eight students joined the Alaska Salmon Program at the camps nestled in the Wood River system.
You may be familiar with the Alaska Salmon Program (ASP) and its critical role in producing data and knowledge for managing and conserving regional ecosystems and their fisheries. But we’re doing a deeper dive into the role of students in the program, focusing on the opportunities for immersive learning and discovery they have when at the field camps, and the bonding experience with both fellow students and instructors during their time in Alaska.
In the 2024 summer field season, eight students headed up to the ASP camps based in the Wood River system. Nestled among Lake Aleknagik and Lake Nerka – which are two of five interconnected lakes which drain via the Wood River into the Nushagak River – are the camps students call home for a month or so, living and breathing fishery science.
Emma Bell, a community college transfer student who is about to graduate with a bachelor’s in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from SAFS, remarked that the view from the dining area was unbeatable. “Sitting in the main house and looking out the sliding glass door every day was one of my favorite parts. Being able to unplug a bit from the real world and just sit with the beauty of Alaska was something I really needed.”
Emma Bell
The unbeatable view of Lake Aleknagik from the field camp.
Undergraduates visit Alaska as part of the AERA class (Aquatic Ecological Research in Alaska), supported by graduate students, field technicians, staff and professors. And a unique part of the class is that it goes hand-in-hand with fieldwork, where students can put into practice the knowledge, concepts, and skills they learn. For Ryan Luvera, a SAFS and Marine Biology double major about to enter his third year at UW, connecting key concepts and real-world applications was vital: “Learning so much about Bristol Bay and the ecosystem at large was a highlight for me. I feel like my view of nature has changed completely with all the knowledge I’ve gained, largely from the professors in the AERA class, and knowledge that you gain from being able to experience the scenery firsthand.”
Callie Murakami
Measuring length and fin clip sampling live salmon on Whitefish Creek.
So what does a day in the life of a student with the Alaska Salmon Program look like? “Days varied, but generally we were up and ready to go at 9am,” said Emma Meyer, a junior at SAFS. “We would go to the classroom for a few hours of lectures before heading out to the field. Fieldwork could range from measuring sediment size to sampling juvenile salmon to collecting otoliths. In the afternoon, we caught up with assignments before dinner, then have some downtime.”
By the start of July, millions of sockeye salmon return to the lakes and rivers where ASP students are studying. “The field was incredible, and it was amazing to be out there seeing all the salmon day in and day out,” shared Emma Bell. “We talk a lot about salmon in Washington and in our classes at SAFS but actually standing in a stream where thousands of sockeye are spawning really puts things in perspective for you.”
Emma Bell
Millions of sockeye salmon return to the lakes and rivers where ASP students study during the summer.
Building up skills that will set students in good stead for future studies and careers involving fishery science and fieldwork is a vital goal of the Alaska Salmon Program. “There was no better way to learn than to be out in the field with your professors,” shared Callie Murakami, an Aquatic and Fishery Sciences major going into junior year. “It was one thing to be taught in the classroom by all the amazing researchers but being outside with them and asking questions about the salmon, streams, and surrounding environment while we were right there in it was so much more memorable and a lot more hands-on. I loved when we were out in the field collecting data and chatting.”
Spending so much time in the field also provides a unique chance for students to build confidence in themselves. “What I didn’t expect was how much my confidence in myself increased,” said Emma Meyer. “As a transfer student, I had some moments of imposter syndrome during my first year at UW, where I felt behind in my scientific and academic background, but I found that I was more than capable. I learned how to collaborate with my peers, and the program helped me to see that we’re not competing and that there’s a place for everyone as long as we’re willing to learn from each other.”
But it’s not all work! Stay tuned for our next blog where we hear from students about their downtime in Alaska, what community living in a field camp involves, and how students found out about the opportunity to spend a month in Alaska.
Emma Meyer
Two undergraduate students – Yajaira Ponce and Ryan Luvera – beach seining in Alaska.
In an increasingly globalized world, aquatic foods have followed the same trend. Seafood is one of the most highly traded foods in the world and is a critical resource for human nutrition, livelihoods, and revenue. But despite this globalization trend, researchers have revealed that the basic characteristics of aquatic food trade remain largely unknown.
In a new study, which presents results from a newly developed database called ARTIS (Aquatic Resource Trade in Species) on species trade for all farmed and wild aquatic foods spanning almost 25 years from 1996 to 2020, researchers have provided the first global estimates of seafood species and nutrient trade flows. The database consists of over 2400 species from 193 countries and over 35 million bilateral records. Published in September 2024 in Nature Communications, the study was led by Jessica Gephart from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), and the research team comprised eight institutions from across the globe.
The graphic shows a conceptual representation of problems ARTIS aims to address. Researchers have provided the first global estimates of seafood species and nutrient trade flows in a new paper.
Feeding people nutritious and sustainable diets, providing economic opportunities for communities, and generating revenue for a country, are just some of the reasons why aquatic food systems are an important resource. Trade of aquatic foods brings a range of benefits and risks for food security, resilience, and sustainability, but the knowledge gaps in trade presented a key problem the research team wanted to tackle.
One of the key issues identified was the way that trade data for aquatic foods is reported. Although the data is publicly available, there are big unknowns in what should be basic knowledge, such as what the main species consumed are, whether they are farmed or wild, and whether they are sourced from domestic or foreign sources. The ARTIS model tackled the root cause of the issue, namely that trade is reported in terms of products. This often includes multiple species, and any one species can go into multiple product forms. ARTIS overcomes this issue by tracing flows back to the estimated producing country, and estimating the species mix within traded products.
Why is information such as this important to know? Nearly 60 million tonnes of aquatic foods were exported in 2020, representing 11% of global aquaculture trade by value. Aquatic foods are also a key source of nutrition worldwide, with global consumption increasing by nearly 20% during the period covered by the study. By gaining deeper insight into aquatic food trade, researchers can provide more concrete data on associated risks to do with globalization, such as accelerating the nutrition transition to unhealthy diets, undermining domestic production, exposing local markets to international shocks, and degrading local environment to meet distant market demand.
As questions of sustainable diet grow in importance worldwide, having accurate trade data for aquatic foods is critical. There are different dimensions to consider when thinking about the sustainability of food. Terrestrial versus seafood. Wild caught versus farmed. Knowing where food comes from, what the emission footprint is, whether it was caught in a sustainably managed fishery, and other aspects involved in trade that ultimately lands it on a consumer’s plate, is vital information.
This September, we’re joined by our newest faculty member, Assistant Professor Carter Smith, an interdisciplinary coastal ecologist whose interests lie at the intersection of multiple disciplines including community ecology, conservation and restoration science, and coupled human natural systems research.
Making the move to SAFS from Duke University Marine Lab, NC, where she was a Lecturing Fellow, Carter describes her journey to becoming a scientist as very circuitous. “My whole childhood I always wanted to be a performer, so I majored in Theater Arts in undergrad, but during that time I also worked a lot in outdoor education and as a mountain guide for NOLS,” Carter shared. “I fell in love with teaching, being outside, and exploring.”
After graduating from college, Carter channeled this passion into an outdoor education job, and worked with the Catalina Island Marine Institute, teaching a week-long marine biology curriculum to 4th–12th graders. “It was during this time that I absolutely fell in love with the ocean and hatched the idea to go back to school and do a PhD, despite knowing nothing about research,” Carter said. “Luckily, my PhD advisor, Charles Peterson, thought it was really cool that I had taken an advanced puppetry class and didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t have a science degree, and he took a chance on me.”
Carter will set up her Coastal Ecology and Restoration Lab at SAFS.
Once joining his lab, Carter recalls a strong desire to do field work and wanting her work to have strong applications. “I was given total freedom to decide what I wanted to study, and I started reading about different novel restoration techniques for coastal protection that were being used in NC and thought it was such an exciting idea that married my interests in community ecology, applied ecology, and social-ecological systems.”
Sharing what excites her most about joining SAFS, Carter said: “I’m really excited about joining such a distinguished faculty group with very diverse research interests, in an area of the world that is very supportive of habitat restoration and that has a track record of working to manage resources with diverse stakeholders.” Setting up her Coastal Ecology and Restoration Lab at SAFS, Carter will be recruiting students who have varied interests related to applied ecology.
Coming from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, Carter says one thing she is not looking forward to is the cold water. “I have never worked in Puget Sound, so it’s exciting to use this first year to explore, observe, and chat with coastal managers and restoration practitioners to understand priority research needs. I’m intrigued to see what lessons and observations that I’ve made on the East Coast can be applied to ecosystems in Puget Sound. But the cold water…I’m not excited about that.”
Carter’s research is not system specific, and the opportunity to work along urban shorelines, and in the seagrass, oyster, and saltmarsh ecosystems that make up Puget Sound is a prospect she’s eager to explore.
Now, enough about work – what is Carter’s favorite marine organism? “Abalone, because they are so beautiful and also delicious.” Welcome to SAFS, Carter!
Call for participants and mentors for the GRFP workshop! The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) offers 3 years of support for graduate students (~$37k salary, ~$16k toward tuition, and some travel/internship opportunities) to be used over a 5-year period. This fellowship is for students who will be applying for graduate school this fall or are first- or second-year graduate students.
If you are applying for the GRFP this year and are interested in being mentored, please fill out this survey by September 1. This grant is open to undergraduates, those who have graduated with their Bachelor’s, and first or second year graduate students.
If you have grant-writing experience (not necessarily with the GRFP) and are interested in mentoring applicants on their essays, please fill out this survey by September 1. We welcome graduate students and post-docs as mentors!
We will be running a workshop designed to help applicants through the process of applying for the GRFP by connecting them with advice, mentorship, and feedback from senior grad students, postdocs, and faculty. The workshop is hybrid and takes place Sept 11, Sept 18, Sept 25, Oct 2, and Oct 9 from 5:30-7pm PT in FSH 203 (zoom details to be shared soon). We pair applicants with mentors (including GRFP fellows, recipients of national fellowship programs, and post-doctoral researchers) for feedback and advice on GRFP applications. We also walk applicants through the components of the application, and have at least one guest-faculty speaker, all under the theme of discussing what makes a successful application.
Reach out to the 2024 GRFP workshop coordinators directly at:
In a new study challenging conventional thinking about how populations of large baleen whales recover from whaling, researchers have revealed that populations continue increasing rapidly for a wide range of recovery levels, only slowing once approaching pre-whaling levels. This could have wide implications for how agencies from across the world manage whale populations, and when we think a population has fully recovered from overexploitation.
The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a species of baleen whale.
Standard ecological theory, also known as density dependence, holds that as populations increase, they compete more for food, and eventually it gets harder to find food, resulting in slower growth in body size, lower survival, and lower birth rates, all of which result in slower population recovery at higher abundance. This theory has resulted in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) designating 60% as the minimum target for whale recovery, basing this off thinking that whale populations increase in numbers most rapidly at 60% of pre-whaling abundance. The new study shows that, on average, 80% is a more reflective figure for large whales, with recovery rates being high over a wide range of abundance levels.
This study changes global thinking about whale recovery and management, with the research team expecting whale populations to recover at rapid rates over a much wider range of abundance levels, plus a longer time period to reach management targets if the target increases from 60% to 80%.
The study, sixteen years in the making, started off at a Scientific Committee of the IWC in 2008, where scientists Alex Zerbini and Trevor Branch wondered if it was reasonable for the IWC to assume that recovery slows down as populations increase. Rob Williams then tracked down the history of this concept as used by the IWC. Fast forward a few years with key contributions from Felipe Hurtado-Ferro and a visit by lead author Yu Kanaji to the University of Washington in 2019-2020, and the project was completed.
Using estimates of abundance in each year, the team focused on four whale populations that have a long time series of data: bowhead whales in the Arctic Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas, gray whales in the eastern North Pacific, and humpback whales in the eastern North Pacific and eastern Australia.
Trevor Branch
A whale pictured from the E Australian humpback population in Hervey Bay. A whale’s fluke (tail) is commonly used for identification.
They fit sophisticated Bayesian models to these data to estimate not just the rate of recovery, but also how that rate changes with abundance, which is where the difficulty comes in. Little is known about where density dependence operates: does it affect recovery at low, medium, or only high abundance levels? It requires very good data to estimate changes in recovery rates, and these kinds of data are very hard to come by. By fitting the models to the data, they could estimate how much whale recovery rates slow down as the population increases.
The new results have multiple implications for the management of whale populations, beyond the expectation that increase rates remain high across a broad range of population sizes. In particular, the research team suggests that international recovery targets, currently set at 60% of pre-whaling levels, should be increased to a default of 80%, since this is where maximum population increase occurs.
