John C. Field (PhD, 2004)
I began my fisheries career in Santa Cruz, California, when I took a night job as a deckhand on a local fishing boat while also taking a course in biological oceanography from the University of California Santa Cruz.  The course included a section on climate variability and the impact on fisheries resources, with a focus on the classic story of the rise and fall of both the California sardine fishery and the Peruvian anchoveta fishery.  

Anne B. Hollowed (PhD 1990)
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have maintained close ties with SAFS. In 1990, I graduated from SAFS with a PhD, and found a position with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in Seattle.  This gave me the opportunity to witness the impact of SAFS on fisheries science throughout the world over the last 30 years. 

William G. Clark (PhD, 1975)
In 1969, I had a degree in economics and mathematics from the University of Michigan, but what I really wanted to do was to go to graduate school and build computer models of marine ecosystems. I interviewed at a number of oceanography departments, and they all turned me down because I didn’t have any undergraduate credits in biology. 

Dick Myhre (School of Fisheries, BS 1950)
I graduated from high school in 1939 and enlisted in the Washington National Guard in November of that year.  The National Guard was activated in September 1940 and that meant I was on active duty in the Army.  I received my Honorable Discharge in October 1945 and was able to attend the UW on the GI Bill.  

The species found in a particular place (“species assemblages”) differ from those found in other places, and figuring out why this is so has occupied the minds of ecologists since the mid-20th century. Currently two theories dominate: the niche theory, and the neutral theory. The niche theory holds that species assemblages result from species migrating into a particular place, and then either thriving or leaving based on how good of a match they are to the habitat and other living organisms (the “niche”) in that place. 

Schistosomiasis (also known as billharzia) is a parasitic flatworm that infects a quarter of a billion people worldwide, mostly in tropical countries. If left untreated, it causes chronic pain and diseases of the liver and kidney, and kills up to 200,000 people annually. In recent years, control of the disease has focused on mass-treating humans with a drug called praziquantel, instead of reducing the prevalence of snails that are a required part of the parasite’s life cycle. 

Chinook salmon (king salmon) are the most prized salmon in the Pacific because of their large size. But now an analysis shows that the oldest Chinook salmon are disappearing, and their size is also declining, and these patterns are seen from California to western Alaska and in both wild and hatchery Chinook salmon. The research by SAFS researchers Jan Ohlberger and Daniel Schindler, and their coauthors Eric Ward and Bert Lewis, appears in the journal Fish and Fisheries, and was highlighted in UW News. 

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. 

The Bevan Series is the premier seminar series at SAFS, bringing 10 speakers each year from around the globe to discuss, debate, and challenge our community to listen to different perspectives. This year, the associated undergraduate class has been writing a series of blogs, one for each speaker. In the most recent post, undergraduates Carter Johnson, Ethan Seay, and Max Urbanek highlight for Valentine’s Day the relationship tips needed for science and policy. 

SAFS Professor Chelsea Wood was awarded a Sloan Fellowship, awarded to early-career researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. Prof. Wood is a prolific researcher who uses parasites and pathogens (both human and fish-based) to uncover fundamental ecological truths about the natural world. She will receive $65,000 to further her research initiatives, which includes using museum fish specimens as “parasite time capsules”, as reported in UW News.