Summer research on the Rio Grande
During the summer of 2025, members of the Wood Lab travelled to Albuquerque, New Mexico to work with Drs.Tom Turner and Sara Brant from University of New Mexico Museum of Southwestern Biology to quantify the change in parasite abundance and diversity in the Rio Grande over the past 72 years, a period stretching from 1938 to 2010...
Changing waters, changing views: Stakeholder perspectives on ocean acidification and adaptations in shellfish aquaculture
Shellfish aquaculture is a vital industry in the US, but one which faces mounting challenges threatening both productivity and business viability. Research often fails to align with growers’ immediate needs, so to close this gap, a team led by Connor Lewis-Smith set out to document how industry participants perceive ocean acidification threats and evaluate emerging adaptation strategies that are actively being researched...
Who’s who? Using identification tools to tell freshwater sculpin apart
Scanning through the rows and rows of preserved fish housed in the UW Fish Collection, it’s easy to get lost trying to figure out what each fish is, especially to the untrained eye. Fish identification is a necessary step when preserving specimens from the wild, which deliver key insights for researchers delving into the untold secrets of fish. For SAFS undergraduate Liam Aston, his capstone research involves looking at Cottus specimens in the Fish Collection, a group of freshwater sculpin found throughout the Northern Hemisphere...
NOAA Explorer-in-Training Program Application Now Open
NOAA Ocean Exploration is excited to announce that the application for the 2025 Explorer-in-Training program is now open! This year, the Explorer-in-Training program will feature two paid internship options: (a) 10-week, summertime opportunities and (b) 2-4 week expedition-based opportunities. The 10-week internships provide students an opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge through long-term projects supported by mentors in NOAA Ocean Exploration and partner organizatio...
Evolution and elongation in deep dwelling anglerfishes
Working with specimens from the Burke Museum and NOAA, Elizabeth Miller, a former postdoc at SAFS, was captivated by the great diversity of shapes of anglers, which was at odds with how the species is often depicted in popular culture (think Finding Nemo). Elizabeth set out to build a family tree of anglerfishes and delve into the evolution of new shapes, such as body elongatio...
Giant fish keep washing up in Oregon
In a new video created by the Burke Museum, Fish Collections Manager Katherine Maslenikov takes us behind the scenes of the Burke Museum to answer questions about the giant bizarre Sunfish washing up on the shores of Orego...
Uncovering parasites in one of the world’s largest fish collections
Housed in a set of World War II artillery bunkers on the outskirts of New Orleans is a surprising, and gargantuan, fish collection. Home to the largest collection of post-larval fish specimens in the world – 7 million to be precise – the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection at the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute (TUBRI) was the destination for a group of UW researchers over the summer...
Working with the Port of Seattle during a Washington Sea Grant Fellowship
Selected as the 2022–2023 Washington Sea Grant Keystone Fellow, Ashley Townes spent a year working with the Port of Seattle’s maritime habitat team on advancing the development and implementation of innovative habitat restoration projects including kelp research, fish sampling with underwater remote operated vehicles (ROVs) and 360-degree cameras, and bankline monitoring to survey the condition and character of shorelines at port facilities in the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Shilshole Bay, Elliott Bay, the East and West waterways and the Duwamish Waterway...
Integrating mathematics with fishery science: another year of the Varanasi Internship
Now running for over a decade, the Varanasi Quantitative Undergraduate Summer Internship Program brings together math and fisheries sciences in a unique experience for students, who spend a summer working on research projects at NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC). A collaborative program jointly funded by NOAA Fisheries, SAFS and the UW Department of Mathematics, and endowed by Usha and S...
SEAS hosts the Seattle Aquarium Youth Ocean Advocates at SAFS
Ending the year with a special outreach event, the Students Explore Aquatic Sciences (SEAS) group hosted the Seattle Aquarium Youth Ocean Advocate volunteers. With a tour of SAFS, the UW Fish Collection and other labs in the College of the Environment, the group – made up of local high school students – had insight into the extensive research and scientific projects across UW’s marine science program...