What fieldwork did the Applied Ecology Lab get up to last summer? Mark Scheuerell, Associate Professor at SAFS, shared insights into Washington’s aquaculture and some of the research underway at his lab.
Washington is the nation’s leading producer of farmed clams, oysters, and mussels, contributing nearly $200 million to our economy and supporting over 1900 jobs. Accordingly, there is demand for growth within the shellfish aquaculture industry, but a key impediment to doing so sustainably is that we don’t have a firm grasp on the ecological implications of converting nearshore habitat to shellfish production.
Therefore, we want to know how shellfish aquaculture functions as nearshore habitat, relative to uncultivated areas, with the aim of helping resource managers overcome this barrier and assess potential tradeoffs when planning the sustainable expansion of shellfish aquaculture.
One of our goals is to quantify the potential impacts of shellfish aquaculture on foraging by fish and crabs. Karl Veggerby, a grad student in my lab, and I have been collaborating with scientists from NOAA to examine food sources for fish and crab species commonly found in areas within and immediately adjacent to shellfish farms, and then contrasting those results to our findings from an area without shellfish aquaculture, Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
The photo below shows us in August 2022 of our lab group working with our community partners at the Drayton Harbor Oyster Farm to sample fish and crabs inside and adjacent to their commercial shellfish aquaculture site near the Canadian border.
Summer fieldwork in the Puget Sound: the UW Applied Ecology Lab’s research boat floats above an eelgrass meadow in the Salish Sea.
Tiny pieces of plastic in the ocean might seem innocuous on their own, but their growing presence is a frustrating issue facing marine ecosystems. The particles’ small size makes them difficult to clean up, and it also allows them to easily burrow into marine environments or even get ingested by ocean organisms.
The NSF GRFP aims to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the US and broaden participation in science and engineering of underrepresented groups. Highly sought after, only about 2,000 out of 12,000 applicants are successful in obtaining awards each year.
This year from within the UW College of the Environment, the five awardees are:
Emily pulls up a gill net to sample near-shore fish on Lake Wilderness.
Founded as a course by former SAFS graduate students Meryl Mims and Lauren Kuehne, and professor Jim Seeb, the course developed into a workshop in 2012 led by Meryl Mims, Lauren Kuehne, Emma Hodgson and Margaret Siple. The framework for the workshop which focuses on grant and fellowship proposal writing was published as a peer-reviewed article by these four grad student founders in 2016.
The workshop has been held every year since 2012, with each year building upon elements to make it a useful tool for applicants, including info sessions, polls on research ideas, and mentors relevant to each research topic. In more recent years, the workshop has been continued by Kristin Privitera-Johnson and Erica Escajeda (SAFS), Sam May (SAFS) and Mary Fisher (SAFS/SEFS), and the current coordinators, Helena McMonagle and Markus Min (SAFS). The workshop has expanded to SEFS and SMEA participants and mentors, and last year was extra special with an outside mentor joining from NOAA.
Sriram at a collaborative fieldsite in Eastern Washington, taking root samples from a Populus plant for microbiome analysis. Sriram will be taking the NSF GRF to Cornell’s department of Horticulture for his MS and PHD.
Kicking off with spring info sessions, students are polled over the summer about what research ideas they have for the GRFP proposal, allowing them to be paired with a mentor doing similar work. The workshop itself runs from September to October. Part of the mentorship process is a brainstorming discussion about proposal ideas and tips on CV writing. A panel discussion with former GRFP awardees also facilitates a useful exchange where current applicants can find out what has worked for others.
The workshop presents a fantastic opportunity for both intra- and inter-department community building and networking, with speakers including Chelsea Wood presenting tips on letters of recommendations, and Mark Scheuerell about writing compelling personal statements and research plans.
Ending with an NSF-style review session, this final step is a speed review session simulating how proposals might be assessed and students benefit from feedback from multiple mentors on their full application.
The whole process is collaborative and relies on people willing to volunteer their time in SAFS, SEFS, and SMEA. One of the key aims of the workshop is to make the application process as equitable and accessible as possible, so join us in spreading the word about it to anyone who is interested.
Lara and several other onlookers peer through a spotting scope to observe wolves in the Slough Creek Pack at Yellowstone National Park.
A bobcat (Lynx rufus) caught on a trail camera at the Hopland Research and Extension Center in Northern California. Lara used trail cameras to monitor how carnivores like bobcats and coyotes responded to non-lethal livestock protection tools.
We are excited to announce that the Equity & Inclusion Committee has released the “Undergraduate Mentorship Guide for Community-Building”, which is now available on the SAFS DEI webpage! The guide is designed to help undergraduate students and their mentors navigate the mentoring relationship and achieve success.
This mentorship guide is intended primarily for undergraduate students (mentees) and for graduate students, postdocs, and staff, (who may serve as mentors) at SAFS. This mentor relationship plays an important role in community-building and can help support SAFS undergrads.
The main goal of the guide is to encourage community-building within all of SAFS, so that undergrads can find answers to any questions they may have about their education and opportunities at the UW as well as in their future careers. Inside the guide, the section for mentees includes potential topics for mentorship, tips for finding a mentor, and how to set expectations and boundaries. The section for mentors explores mentoring dynamics and roles, phases in a mentoring partnership, and listening techniques.
Mentorship is a critical component of student success and sense of belonging, and we hope that this new guide will be a valuable tool for all of our students and their mentors.
A special thanks to Jenn Gosselin for contributing the bulk of the work on this guide! If you have questions or feedback, you can contact the SAFS EI committee at safsincl@uw.edu. We look forward to hearing how the Undergraduate Mentorship Guide has helped you in your mentorship journey!
Join your SAFS Community for a special All Hands Meeting where you can ask all of your burning questions!
Want to know more about the life of a post doc? Interested in the graduate program process? Always wanted to ask a faculty member what their day looks like? Wondering what are some of the important topics impacting our school? Want to know how SAFS is working to be more inclusive?
Taking place on Monday, April 24, at 2:30-4pm, get together with all of the SAFS community to ask and answer questions from amongst our different peer groups: undergrads, grads, postdocs, staff and faculty.
A lot has been happening in recent months, including a new SAFS Code of Conduct and DEI Strategic Plan, and this year’s All Hands Meeting aims to build community and connection more deeply and create space for peer groups to learn about each other’s experiences.
The set up on the day will involve splitting into different rooms with a mix of all peer groups, with time to answer questions submitted beforehand. It will finish with everyone gathering together at the end to share highlights, and facilitators will send notes out afterwards for those who cannot join.
We look forward to seeing you there for the SAFS 2023 All Hands Meeting: Burning Questions, and make sure to submit ahead of time: https://forms.gle/qb46n3JNoWQ6M8UK7
The SAFS Boots in the Mud fund is a special opportunity to provide our students with materials and equipment needed for immersive learning opportunities.
In the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at nearly four times the global average, a collaborative effort, combining Indigenous Knowledge with multidisciplinary science has been used to investigate the denning habitat selection of Alaska’s ringed seals.
Essential to Arctic ecosystems, sea ice and snow play a critical role for both marine mammals and Indigenous Peoples in these regions. During an unusually warm spring in 2019, Jessica Lindsay, a SAFS PhD candidate advised by Professor Kristin Laidre, worked with the Ikaaġvik Sikukun team in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, to investigate how warming temperatures impact where ringed seals (“natchiq” in Iñupiaq) make their dens.
Ringed seals are a valued nutritional, spiritual, and cultural resource for coastal Indigenous communities in the Arctic. A key component of this study, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in February 2023, was knowledge co-production, which is a research approach that integrates scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing to produce novel insights.
J Lindsay, NMFS MMPA Permit No. 19309
A ringed seal mother and pup outside a partially melted den in Kotzebue Sound.
Ringed seals in Alaska are found in the seasonal sea-ice zones of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas. They are uniquely adapted to occupy areas of landfast ice by maintaining breathing holes in the ice. As the snow accumulates, these breathing holes are converted to snow-covered dens for resting and birthing in the spring. Climate change is impacting ringed seal habitat in a number of ways, including decreasing spring snow cover for dens.
In the winter of 2018–2019, much less sea ice formed in Kotzebue Sound compared to previous years, giving seals less space for resting and denning.
Bobby Schaeffer, a Kotzebue Elder and co-author of the study, said, “For the first time in Iñupiat history, 90% of Kotzebue Sound was ice-free the entire winter. That has never happened before.”
Breakup of the sea ice also happened earlier in the spring while pups may still have been nursing. That April and May, Lindsay worked with Schaeffer and other researchers out on the sea ice to measure ringed seal habitat features, such as snow depth and surface roughness, which helps snow drifts to form. The research team used drones, or “unoccupied aerial vehicles,” outfitted with cameras to collect images of the sea ice near Kotzebue, which Lindsay then combed through to find seals. Satellite imagery, combined with ground-truthing from on-ice surveys, was used to help describe the snow and ice characteristics at the places where seals were found.
Photo: J Lindsay
Elders and study co-authors Cyrus Harris (l) and Bobby Schaeffer (r) at a ringed seal breathing hole.
Using the data from both aerial and on-ice surveys, habitat selection models showed that ringed seal groups and pups selected for deeper snow depth and intermediate surface roughness. The habitat conditions in winter 2018–2019 were not typical of previous years in Kotzebue Sound but may be considered indicative of what ringed seal habitat conditions could be like in a future of dwindling ice.
“In a way, the unusual winter in 2019 was a good research opportunity,” Lindsay said. “It gave us the chance to see how ringed seals use the habitat that’s available to them when they don’t have access to a ‘normal’ amount of snow and ice.”
D Hauser, NMFS MMPA Permit No. 19309
SAFS PhD candidate Jessica Lindsay (r) measuring a ringed seal breathing hole with Andy Mahoney (l), a sea ice geophysicist at University of Alaska Fairbanks and co-author on the study.
This study came up with a new way to quantify ringed seal habitat by using satellite image characteristics. Brighter areas of the satellite image tended to have deeper snow depth during on-ice surveys, and similarly, areas of the satellite image with high variability in brightness tended to match up with areas on the ice that were rough instead of flat. As sea ice becomes less safe to travel on, remote methods like satellite imagery will become increasingly important for studying seal habitat.
Ringed seals are listed as “threatened” under the US Endangered Species Act, and this study will help wildlife managers better understand what habitat features are important for them as climate change continues to affect Arctic Alaska.
J Lindsay, NMFS MMPA Permit No. 19309
A white-coated ringed seal pup at a partially melted-open lair in Kotzebue Sound.
“These types of focal studies are critical to the conservation and management of ice-dependent species. We need to collect data that help us understand the impacts of climate change and we need to work with Indigenous communities while we do it,” says Laidre.
The Ikaaġvik Sikukun project is an important example of how knowledge co-production can ensure that research is successful and that the results are valuable to Indigenous communities who are reliant on marine resources. Insight and involvement from Elders was essential throughout the project.
Cyrus Harris, a Kotzebue Elder and co-author of the study, said, “I see the greatest benefit of Ikaaġvik Sikukun as coming together and really documenting the Indigenous perspective of living on the ice and sea, and looking at how things were back then to today with climate change. It’s been in the minds of Iñupiaq People from time immemorial—this project is just putting the science into it.”
Arctic Indigenous communities such as Kotzebue are on the front lines of climate change, with substantial environmental changes observed even within Elders’ lifetimes, and knowledge co-production studies may become increasingly important for communities and for scientific research in a warming Arctic.
Photo: J Lindsay, NMFS MMPA Permit No. 19309
A ringed seal mother and pup during the spring melt in Kotzebue Sound.
Interested in more information about this project?
Elder Advisory Council: John Goodwin, Cyrus Harris, Bobby Schaeffer, Roswell Schaeffer Sr.
Principal Investigators: Christopher Zappa (Lead PI), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University; Donna Hauser, International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Andy Mahoney, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Alex Whiting, Native Village of Kotzebue; Sarah Betcher, Farthest North Films; Ajit Subramaniam, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Additional team members: Peter Boveng, Marine Mammal Laboratory, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NOAA-NMFS; Nathan Laxague, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University; Carson Witte, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Read other papers from the Ikaaġvik Sikukun project:
One of the best ways for graduate students to present their research to an extensive, global audience and interact with national and international colleagues is to attend conferences relevant to their field of study.
Thanks to the work of FINS and contributions from our community through the purchase of merchandise graduate students like Maria Kuruvilla, Sarah Yerrace, Zoe Rand, and Sarah Teman have been able to attend academic conferences and take part in research expeditions.
In her 5th year as PhD candidate in QERM and SAFS, Maria used her FINS award to travel to an Animal Behavior Society Conference in Costa Rica in 2022. Because of the COVID pandemic, this was Maria’s first opportunity to travel to an international conference, and she valued the ability to network with international colleagues and discuss her work with other experts in the field. As an added bonus, this was an opportunity for her to make new friends and visit a new country.
Maria Kuruvilla used her award to travel to an Animal Behavior Society Conference in Costa Rica.
Sarah Teman, a master’s student at SAFS, received a FINS award in Winter 2023, which helped to fund her travel to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to participate in a special USGS-led polar bear research expedition. This feeds directly into herstudy focus on the health of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea. Understanding the health of these apex predators is not only important from a wildlife or ecosystem health perspective, but also for Indigenous communities around the Arctic who rely on bears as an important food and cultural resource.
A FINS award in 2022 allowed Zoe to travel to the Society for Marine and Mammalogy conference. Because she had begun her graduate studies during the pandemic, this was an extra special moment—her first chance to present in person at an academic conference as a graduate student. While presenting her poster, Zoe had the opportunity to connect with scientists from around the world who share similar research interests, and she’s excited to continue strengthening these relationships as she progresses in her PhD studies and in her future as a scientist.
Presenting at the Society for Marine and Mammalogy conference, Zoe Rand shared her work on the Southern Resident Killer Whale population.
Professional development is a critical part of being a graduate student. Thanks to FINS, Sarah Yerrace was able to travel to Orlando, Florida, for the Association of Dive Program Administrators Annual Symposium and the Dive Equipment and Marketing Association Show in 2022. It was an incredible in-person networking opportunity, with so many dive professionals that she had only ever corresponded with via email—finally, she was able to put faces to names!
Sarah Yerrace traveled to Florida for a professional development opportunity at the Association of Dive Program Administrators (ADPA).
Community is important for our graduate students here at SAFS, and we’re thankful for the opportunities opened up to them in both their research and future careers by the awards funded through FINS and supported directly by you.
Stay tuned for more updates on how this year’s awards will be used by our students, and if you haven’t yet done so, be sure to check out the range of merchandise available for purchase to support them.
Interested in how you can support FINS?
Check out the range of merch online! Mugs, accessories, shirts, stickers and sweatshirts!
In a new class taught by Dr. Amy Van Cise, students can dive into the world of evolutionary ecology of marine mammals.
FISH 497B MWF 12:30–1:20 pm
Explore the diverse and integral ecological roles played by marine mammals in our global aquatic ecosystems, from coastal and riverine to open ocean and deep ocean environments.
Examine the major evolutionary adaptations driving the radiation of mammals into the aquatic environment and into a diverse array of ecological niches.
Consider the evolutionary strategies and ecological roles that are used by marine mammals and how those roles help shape aquatic ecosystems.
Learn about ecological concepts such as food web dynamics, predator-prey interactions, and trophic cascades; animal movements and distributions; community assemblages; and ecological drivers of isolation, divergence, and mixing.
Consider our own species’ role in the evolutionary ecology of marine mammals.
Instructor Pre-reqs
Marine Biology/Ecology (FISH 250, BIOL 220, FISH 270, FISH 311, or equiv);
Scientific Writing (FISH 290, MARBIO 205, FHL 333, or equiv)
