SAFS Associate Professor Chelsea Wood is the recipient of a 2022 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This prestigious award will support Wood’s novel research on the historical ecology of parasitism and will allow her to create an active-learning, open-access version of her undergraduate parasite ecology course.

This will be my last “From the Director” letter as my 10-year tenure as SAFS director is drawing to a close. It has been an exciting, enjoyable, challenging, and at times exhausting decade. We have seen numerous transitions in the School’s faculty, staff, and students, resulting in major changes in research, teaching, advising, and administration.

The UW College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Professor Tim Essington has agreed to serve for a five-year term as director of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, effective July 1, 2022. Essington is a fisheries ecologist, whose research focuses on the application of ecological knowledge to sustain fisheries and ecosystems. He has an active research program in Puget Sound examining consequences of climate change, hypoxia, and nearshore restoration on food webs, and he is also well known for his global syntheses of fish and fisheries data to reveal ecosystem responses to fishing.

The echosounder-equipped, autonomous underwater glider, Gretel, was launched from the mouth of Resurrection Bay in the northern Gulf of Alaska. After technical adjustments, Gretel will sample the GAK1 line and proceed southeast to rendezvous with the US vessel, the NOAA research vessel Bell M Shimada participating in the 2022 Pan-Pacific International Year of the Salmon High Seas Expedition.

Join us weekly for a new SAFS tradition! Every Monday at 2:30pm, a faculty member will host SAFS Café on the 2nd floor patio of FISH. Bring your coffee or tea and enjoy some refreshments and conversation with colleagues.

Future Rivers invites you to a special film screening on October 14th of the documentary, River to the Heart (105m), followed by a conversation with the director, Eddy Harris, author of Mississippi Solo. This documentary charts Eddy’s adventures as a lone Black man canoeing 2,318 miles down the entirety of the Mississippi River.

Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño, along with researchers from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Baywater Shellfish Farms, will examine the impacts of stressors on shellfish as part of a new project funded by the NOAA Sea Grant and the Ocean Acidification Program.

Thursday, September 30, 2–5pm at the lawn next to FSH; livestream will end before 4pm

This year, the Kickoff will be a hybrid affair, with socially-distanced outdoor activities (and socializing, and food) at the FSH building and a live Zoom webinar for folks who can’t or prefer not to attend in person.

SAFS Assistant Professor Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño was recently named the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. This prestigious award will support Padilla-Gamiño’s research to explore how changing oceans and plastic pollution will impact coral reef ecosystems; it will also support continued education and outreach initiatives with citizens, teachers and grade school students in Hawaii.

Lisa and Jim Seeb, research professors at SAFS for 13 years, retired at the end of September. Their links to the School, however, stretch far back—both were graduate students in the (then) School of Fisheries (Lisa, PhD 1986 [Gunderson]; Jim PhD 1987) before establishing the first fisheries genetics laboratory in Alaska. After 16 years with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (AD-F&G), they were lured to SAFS in 2007 and have been here ever since. Lisa and Jim have made major contributions to population genetic methods and their application to Pacific salmonids. Their work has improved the conservation and use of these iconic species.