A front page investigative CNN article outlines how the Environmental Protection Agency reversed a decision to protect the most valuable salmon fishery in the world, giving the go-ahead for the Pebble Mine, one hour after the head met with the CEO of the Pebble Mine partnership. SAFS professor Thomas Quinn comments in the report: “This is the jewel in the crown of America’s fisheries resources – these salmon. 

Citizen scientists in a program run by Julia Parrish provided data about two mass die-offs of seabirds on the outer coast of Washington state, which is the largest mass death ever to be definitively ascribed to harmful algal blooms. The new report was authored by SAFS postdoc Timothy Jones, with other SAFS contributions from Julia Parrish, André Punt, and Jennifer Lang, as part of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST; a citizen science program at the University of Washington). 

Each summer, aquatic and fishery sciences professor Daniel Schindler and his students travel to Bristol Bay, Alaska to observe one of the most valuable fisheries in the world. 

Ray Hilborn, UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, will receive the 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize this week at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea. 

“If reforms were implemented today, three-quarters of exploited fisheries worldwide could reach population goals within 10 years, and 98 percent by mid-century,” according to a report in PNAS co-authored by SAFS Professors Ray Hilborn, Trevor Branch, and Research Scientist Mike Melnychuk. 

SAFS professor Adam Summers, based at Friday Harbor Labs, collaborated with two English majors, Ian Stevens and Zack Bivins, to create an award-winning video about the clingfish – as chosen by 6th through 8th graders around the world, through the Ocean 180 Video Challenge.
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UW Today featured SAFS professor Ted Pietsch, who co-authored a new report documenting all the fishes in the Salish Sea, from the familiar coho salmon to the intriguing dwarf wrymouth. 

A new study, lead by SAFS Prof. Tim Essington and published on April 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “implicates fishing in the collapse of forage fish stocks and recommends risk-based management tools that would track a fishery’s numbers and suspend fishing when necessary.” Read the full story on UW Today. 

Several in the SAFS community have been working on a management strategy evaluation for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon. Findings were presented to the Alaska Board of Fish resulting in changes to seasonal management targets, reported by The Bristol Bay Times.
Last week the Department of Fish and Game adopted a wider range with raised upper ends for sockeye escapement goals in most Bristol Bay rivers.