Mar 26, 2018

Partnering with indigenous communities to anticipate and adapt to ocean change

Crab fishing gear sits in port at La Push after a delayed opening season.

The productive ocean off Washington state’s Olympic Coast supports an abundant web of life including kelp forests, fish, shellfish, seabirds and marine mammals. The harvest and use of these treaty-protected marine resources have been central to the local tribes’ livelihoods, food security and cultural practices for thousands of years. But ocean acidification is changing the chemistry of these waters, putting many coastal species — and the human communities that depend upon them — under threat.

First-ever observations of a living anglerfish, a female with her tiny mate, coupled for life

A female anglerfish known as the Fanfin Seadevil is seen alive in this video screengrab taken at about 800 meters (2,660 feet) deep in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Down deep off the south slope of São Jorge Island in the Azores, west of Portugal in the North Atlantic Ocean, a fearsome-looking fish and her parasitically attached mate drift almost helplessly, salvaging precious energy in their dark, food-scarce environment. The pair, a species never before seen alive by humans, was recorded recently on camera by researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen aboard the LULA1000, a submersible operated by the marine science-focused Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation.

The Seeley family follows its passion for science by giving to UW Environment

The Seeley family is building bridges between a pristine, remote atoll in French Polynesia and the University of Washington. James and Marsha Seeley, parents of UW alumni Laine, ’85, David, ’86, and Elizabeth, ’90, and grandparents to a growing number of Huskies, have led their family in supporting UW marine research at a field station on Tetiaroa. There, scientists and students from the College of the Environment can study delicate, healthy marine ecosystems and develop an understanding of conservation’s future in the face of climate change.

Marine and Environmental Affairs' student uses art to communicate science with #SundayFishSketch

If you log into Twitter on a Sunday and search for #SundayFishSketch, you’ll find a plethora of illustrations of fishes and other marine species. They’re submitted by scientists, artists and anyone else inspired to create, from Seattle to Scotland. #SundayFishSketch was created by Rene Martin, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas, in 2016.

Glaciers in Mongolia's Gobi Desert actually shrank during the last ice age

The Gobi-Altai mountain range in western Mongolia is in a very dry region but ice can accumulate on mountaintops, such as Sutai Mountain, the tallest peak in the range. In the picture, friends of Jigjidsurengiin Batbaatar descend this mountain after helping to install a weather station.

The simple story says that during the last ice age, temperatures were colder and ice sheets expanded around the planet. That may hold true for most of Europe and North America, but new research from scientists in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the UW tells a different story in the high-altitude, desert climates of Mongolia. The recent paper in Quaternary Science Reviews is the first to date ancient glaciers in the high mountains of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.