A new and more accurate study reveals that about 4% of the ocean area experiences fishing each year, a far smaller estimate than previous studies that relied on very large grid sizes. Two recent studies estimated that fishing takes place in 55% of the ocean and 90% of the ocean each year. But these estimates divide the ocean into 0.5°×0.5° grid cells, which are ~3100 km² in size at the equator, and assume each cell is fished if a single fishing location is recorded in the entire cell. 

“Um, Bob, so…have you ever wanted to be a minister?” So went the request one sunny afternoon at the Volunteer Park wading pool, while we were sitting with Bob Francis (professor emeritus) as he watched his grandson. A few months later, Bob officiated our wedding, sprinkling the ceremony and our path forward with his salt-of-the-earth gruff charm. To say SAFS students ask a lot from their major professors was probably an understatement at that point. 

Jennifer and Mark came to SAFS by different routes.
Jennifer was born and raised in Bremerton, WA. She was fortunate to spend a lot of time sailing and SCUBA diving with her family and friends in Puget Sound. Much to her parents’ consternation, however, Jennifer spent her first year of college in Kenya, which offered her a rare opportunity to spend many months traveling around much of eastern and southern Africa. 

Melissa and Juan started their Aquatic and Fishery careers long before moving to Seattle from Ohio and Argentina, respectively, to add School and Sciences. They found much more than that at SAFS.
Melissa grew up on the shores of Lake Erie, doing undergraduate fieldwork on endangered freshwater mussels, subsequently completing her MS at The Ohio State University (OSU). At OSU, she sat in the Byrd Polar Research Center, where climate and climate change were the principal research topics that seized her interest. 

All in the (marine science) family
The Buckley/Gómez-Buckley family has a “score card” at SAFS that reads, BS – 2, MS – 3, PhD -1, with 1 PhD on the horizon. Ours is truly a family with adventures in marine science that over the years have ranged from the Arctic Ocean south to the Coral Sea, and from the Philippine Sea east to the Indian Ocean. 

Love at First Fish
“Hey, what does your Leslie matrix look like?” Anne and I were already good friends and regular study buddies by my final quarter as a Master’s student in 2004. We shared mutual embarrassment when Don Gunderson looked over our shoulders and could barely hold back his disappointment as we struggled to fill in an age-structured Leslie matrix. 

Whooping Cranes are highly endangered. To improve their recovery chances, a new migratory population was reintroduced into the wild in 2001, but their hatching success has been very low. A new study examines three possible hypotheses for this failure: harassment by black flies of nesting birds, effects of captive rearing, and inexperience of breeding birds. The overwhelming finding was that black fly harassment is the cause of poor hatching success: for example, when black fly numbers were reduced experimentally, breeding success doubled. 

The updated version, contains brand new photos and information about the life cycles of these marvelous fish in freshwater and marine environments.

Dams and river crossings often block the migration routes of stream-dwelling fish in addition to their better-known effects preventing salmon from spawning in upper river reaches. Relatively little is known about the movements of mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni) in the Pacific Northwest, despite their widespread distribution. In the upper Cedar River, Washington, mountain whitefish had been absent above the Landsburg Dam, constructed in 1901, until a fish ladder was built in 2004 that allowed their upstream passage. 

Whooping cranes are endangered and slowly recovering from a low point of just 15 birds and one migratory population in the wild. New efforts have established an eastern second migratory population from captive-bred birds, although not without some difficulty, since migration routes are learned from other adults. In the eastern population two methods were used to teach a new migration pathway: imprinting cranes on ultralight aircraft on the ground, which would lead the cranes to an overwintering destination; or imprinting them to follow older whooping cranes or wild sandhill cranes when they migrate.