School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

As part of the UW Wetland Ecosystem Team’s Seattle Seawall Fish Monitoring Program, an underwater video from 2022 has been released.

Documenting what lies beneath in Year 5 of the project in 2022, the video is compiled from snorkel and SCUBA surveys to monitor effectiveness of the Seattle seawall rebuild for improving habitat for juvenile salmon and other nearshore fishes.

For more information visit http://depts.washington.edu/wetlab/

On International Polar Bear Day, the plight of these apex predators could not be more evident, as a result of a myriad of threats to their existence due to climate change.

As their name suggests, polar bears live in the Arctic polar regions of Canada, Greenland, Russia and Alaska. Kristin Laidre, a UW scientist at SAFS, shares that polar bears require ice for almost every aspect of their existence, including feeding, moving, breeding and in some places, maternity denning.

Why is International Polar Bear Day celebrated on February 27th? Because it’s the time mothers and cubs are denning across the Arctic and highlights just one of the existential threats posed by a warming climate at a particularly vulnerable time in a polar bear’s life.

Studying ecology and population dynamics of Arctic marine mammals, Laidre uses data on individual movements, foraging behavior, and life history to unite behavioral, population, and evolutionary ecology. In this time of global climate change, her research on the impacts of a warming world on ice-dependent species is of particular interest.

Kristin Laidre

The conditions of a polar bear’s body are heavily impacted by the loss of ice according to Laidre. With not enough time to feed and gain the fat resources needed to survive the year, the loss of sea ice causes a cascade of issues including on reproduction, survival, and population abundance.

But is there hope for the future? Can polar bears adapt to a warming climate? Across the polar regions, Laidre says that the type of sea ice, the rate we are losing sea ice, and the productivity of the ecosystem is resulting in a variability of response of the world’s 19 polar bear populations.

However, this regional difference is underpinned by a clear prediction: a 30% reduction in the global abundance of polar bears is forecast over the next several decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced.

So what inspires a new generation of scientists to get involved in polar bear research? Sarah Teman, a MS student at SAFS working in Kristin Laidre’s lab, became interested in studying polar bears due to their unique physiology and life history, and the fact that they face very challenging threats.

In her thesis project, conducted under the ‘One Health’ concept that the health of wildlife, ecosystems, and humans are deeply connected, she aims to measure the health of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea over time.

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.

Meanwhile, PhD student Jenny Stern, also working with Laidre, was drawn to the field due to the extreme nature of the Arctic ecosystem and is exploring what is required for top predators to survive in a rapidly changing climate.

Focusing on the Baffin Bay polar bear subpopulation, Jenny’s dissertation looks at feeding ecology and asks some important questions such as how diet varies among demographic groups and space-use strategies.

Jennifer Stern

Jenny analyzes hair and fat samples collected from captured polar bears using stable isotopes and fatty acid analyses and combines this data with movement data from adult females tracked with satellite collars.

When asked about a memorable field experience, she shared that during a 40-day Arctic Research Expedition on a US Coast Guard icebreaker, she got to see a polar bear approach and stand on its hind legs whilst the ship was stuck for a few days in an ice floe. Watching her subject of research exploring and moving through its environment was a favorite memory of hers.

Research remains a critical frontier in efforts to combat the negative impacts of global climate change on species and environments around the world, and the research underway at SAFS highlights just some of the scientific work involved in that effort.

Interested in the wide range of research taking place at SAFS?

The biggest animals to have ever lived on our planet, blue whales are a charismatic species found across the world’s oceans. 

Ranging in size from 79 ft in the Indian Ocean’s pygmy blue whale subspecies to more than 100 ft in Antarctic blue whales, these marine mammals were once hunted to near extinction.

In order to reconstruct past level of whales and discover if blue whale populations were recovering or not after the banning of commercial whaling in the 1980s, scientists have developed models that explain both old whaling catch records and modern-day counts.

Whaling records were incredibly detailed, recording data on every whale caught: species, size, sex, weight, fetus information, who caught them, the nationality of the boat, and date.

These historical datasets were used in decision-making by the International Whaling Commission to realize the Antarctic blue whale was almost extinct and to put a full moratorium on commercial whaling of the species in the 1960s.

Today, researchers like Professor Trevor Branch at UW are using statistical methods and models to study different whale populations across the globe and judge recovery levels.

He has been doing this work for decades. Fitting a model to data sets, he reconstructed what levels of whales there were, are now, and will be in the future, and judging whether they are in recovery or not.

There are many success stories. Almost every large whale population is recovering because whaling was the single biggest impact on these marine mammals in the past. Humpbacks are doing very well, and the blue whales on the Pacific Coast of the US have numbers suggesting they are fully recovered. Others like Antarctic blue whales are recovering but at very low levels, perhaps only 1% of pre-whaling levels.

Not all large whale populations are in good shape, however. North Atlantic right whales are still dying from entanglement with fishing gear and ship strikes, causing a decline in their numbers and raising the risk of extinction given their small population size.

Branch says it’s important to highlight the success stories in conservation of large whale species. Putting research intro practice, sharing why and how it helped recovery, and using it for other populations is vital.

His current work is focused on the assessment of pygmy blue whale populations in the Indian Ocean, with every population having a unique song. The whales repeat these songs over and over, and they are thought to have a mating function since only males sing them. These distinct calls stay stable over many decades, and he is using this information to figure out where each population resides, and therefore how many were caught from each during the whaling era. This will help him to assess trends in number over time for each of these populations… all based on their song!

On World Whale Day, we’re recognizing the importance of whales to the planet’s ecosystems and celebrating the recovery levels seen in most species whilst continuing to conduct research to tackle the continued negative impacts on the few that are still in danger due to human actions.

Find out where studying at SAFS could take you