Friday Harbor Labs outreach excites budding scientists

Students and instructors check out a marine worm that lives along Griffin Bay's sandy shores.

It’s a picture-perfect day on the shores of San Juan Island’s Griffin Bay. The sun is blazing, the tide is out, and Debbie Taylor’s sixth grade class is on the prowl, keeping their eyes peeled for mud- and sand-loving ocean critters. Bedecked in rain boots and sneakers caked in wet sand, the students poke and prod in burrows and under seagrasses in search of marine invertebrates. 

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UW ecologist and citizen scientists lead the charge against invasive crayfish

There’s no time­ like the present for Pine Lake residents—an invasive species of crayfish has taken hold in their backyard and community members are mobilizing to give them the boot. Even though it means setting aside several hours a week during western Washington’s best weather months, these citizen scientists swap their fishing poles for cage traps, hiking boots for clipboards, and swimsuits for scientific instruments to restore the lake’s ecosystem. 

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College of the Environment launches new Outstanding Diversity Commitment Award

Doris Duke Conservation Scholars at UW are helping define how diverse groups shape conservation.

Diversity is more than a word, more than an ideal, and more than the attainment of a particular quantifiable goal. Diversity is the realization of difference and inequity, as well as an understanding of power and privilege. Heightened diversity is nourished through inclusion, the desire to create equal opportunities for all, and the understanding that a diverse community is stronger, richer, and more sustainable than one that actively or passively excludes people who are different.  

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Shellfish center – named after UW’s Ken Chew – to tackle shellfish declines

Ken Chew

Washington state’s newest shellfish hatchery – and the federal government’s only such hatchery in the region – has been named after long-time University of Washington faculty member Ken Chew, a professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences. The Kenneth K. Chew Center for Shellfish Research and Restoration is housed at the Manchester Research Station operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration near Port Orchard. 

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Meet Kate Allstadt, self-described "present-day geologist"

Kate Allstadt in front of the Nile Landslide (photo: Kate Allstadt)

What would you do in a big earthquake? Do you know how your neighborhood would fare? Would the ground beneath your house hold firm, or turn into liquid, or break loose in a landslide? If you had a few seconds or minutes warning, how would you prepare knowing a devastating earthquake was about to be unleashed? In the wake of the nearby 530 Landslide, these are the kinds of questions researchers like Kate Allstadt ask with increasing urgency. 

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