Learn how SAFS PhD student Jessie Hale examines patterns in sea otter feeding over time and space along the Washington coast.

Three graduate students from the College of the Environment have been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This year’s awardees include Irita Aylward and Zoe Krauss from the School of Oceanography, and Helena McMonagle from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

SAFS’ global network is one of its greatest strengths, providing nearly limitless opportunities for scientific and personal discovery. Explore some of our research highlights, spread across tropical and northern latitudes, through an interactive map. Deep dive into our new and exciting projects that provide students interdisciplinary study abroad experiences.

Last quarter we caught up with Delaney Lawson who was down on South Caicos as part of a study abroad experience with the School for Field Studies (SFS)

Ethen Whattam, an undergraduate student in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, recently returned from India, where he spent 10 months studying as a recipient of the Boren Scholarship. Whattam, along with the other student awardees, was given the opportunity to immerse himself in the Hindi language and culture, while researching the country’s complex relationship with water.

A conversation with the team behind the undergraduate-run journal, FieldNotes

Andrew Chin, a senior double majoring in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and Marine Biology shares his month-long experience sailing South Pacific with the SEA Semester program

Students fly 1,777 miles northwest of Seattle and spend a month with the Alaska Salmon Program at their field stations on the banks of Lake Aleknagik and Lake Nerka. Part of the larger Wood River system, these lakes, their creeks, and the surrounding wilderness serve as a “living laboratory” where students are immersed in one of the most valuable salmon fisheries on the planet.

By Ben Miller, SAFS student
When you first arrive at the community of Kampong Phluk, your neck cranes up bamboo stilts to meet the chatter of families in houses high above. From the top of what guidebooks call “bamboo skyscrapers,” locals gaze over the tops of submerged trees, a glittering, island Buddhist temple, and clusters of floating fishing villages in the distance. 

Up to 30% of the time, the true species being sold or served in restaurants is labeled as something else entirely. A new study gathers data on 43 separate papers that DNA tested fish samples to find the actual species being sold, and compared the truth to the species on the labels. The true species identified by DNA was on average 3% less expensive, but slightly more sustainable than the species listed on the labels.