UW research analyst Anthony Odell looks at seawater collected off the coast of Southern California that has been run through a fine sampling net. He is looking for toxic algal cells, including prime culprit Pseudo-nitzschia.
UW research analyst Anthony Odell looks at seawater collected off the coast of Southern California. He is looking for toxic algal cells, including prime culprit Pseudo-nitzschia spp.

The algal bloom that shut down several shellfish fisheries along the West Coast earlier this year has developed into the largest and most severe in a decade or more—stretching from at least central California to as far north as Alaska. UW research analyst Anthony Odell is part of a NOAA-led team of harmful algae experts who are surveying the extent of the patch and searching for the swirling eddies that can become toxic to marine mammals and humans. On board NOAA’s research vessel Bell M. Shimada, Odell is currently doing toxin sampling as part of the voyage’s three-week first leg from San Diego to San Francisco. Three more legs will continue through mid-September, surveying up to the north end of Vancouver Island. Odell is the coastal sampling coordinator at the College of the Environment’s Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks, Washington, where he samples shellfish, phytoplankton, and water quality, and responds to algal bloom events along the state’s outer coast.

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