Michael Gordon/Wikimedia Commons

Puget Sound is one of the best places in the United States to capture energy from the tides. Tidal currents throughout the Sound move especially swift in the narrow spaces around islands and peninsulas.

Those currents are what developers were eyeing when they proposed the first Pacific Northwest tidal energy pilot project in Admiralty Inlet, between the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island. Though federal permits were issued, the project ultimately failed to launch in 2014 due to cost.

A University of Washington paper published May 20 in Energy Research & Social Science examined Washington residents’ perceptions and support for tidal energy, a fledgling industry in the U.S. that is perhaps 20 years behind land-based wind energy. The study found that people who believe climate change is a problem and see economic, environmental and/or social benefits to using tidal energy are more likely to support such projects.

“We can focus on the technical and economic feasibility of tidal energy projects, but really at the early stages we also want to bring social science in because we shouldn’t look at these things in a vacuum or silo,” said lead author Stacia Dreyer, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and adjunct faculty at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

Read More

Congratulations to UW Environment’s Kristi Straus! The lecturer at UW’s Program on the Environment was recently selected to receive the 2017 Distinguished Teaching Award. She will be honored at UW’s Awards of Excellence ceremony on June 8, 2017 at 3:30 p.m. at Meany Hall.

Distinguished Teaching Award recipients are chosen based on a variety of criteria, including mastery of the subject matter, enthusiasm and innovation in teaching and learning process, ability to engage students both within and outside the classroom, ability to inspire independent and original thinking in students and to stimulate students to do creative work, and innovations in course and curriculum design.

“Kristi uses a variety of teaching styles and is always seeking ways to evolve and improve her teaching. She breaks class periods into distinct units and provides learning styles and opportunities for all her students,” one of her award nomination letters stated. “In addition, she connects very well with her students, listens to the sense of the classroom, and gauges well when students need additional instruction. She is enthusiastic, dynamic, caring and knowledgeable.”

The Awards of Excellence event includes a one-hour ceremony hosted by President Cauce and Provost Baldasty, followed by a reception with cupcakes and other snacks, a photo booth and a chance to connect and celebrate with your team members and the rest of the UW community.

Please join us in congratulating Kristi and the rest of the 2017 Awards of Excellence winners!

Read More

Caribbean coral reefs have been invaded by lionfish, showy predators with venomous spines. And they’ve found a new market to exploit: the ocean’s “twilight zone” — an area below traditional SCUBA diving depths, where little is known about the reefs or the species that inhabit them.

Researchers from the University of Washington and Smithsonian Institution have reported the first observed case of lionfish preying upon a fish species that had not yet been named. Their results, published May 25 in PLOS ONE, may indicate an uncertain future for other fish found in the largely unexplored deep-ocean coral reefs.

“Lionfish aren’t going anywhere, and we are faced with the fact that they are permanent residents on Caribbean reefs,” said lead author Luke Tornabene, curator of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and an assistant professor at the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “The hope is that the learning curve is quick and other fish realize lionfish are predators. Right now, studies have shown some prey species to be pretty naïve.”

Read More

Ian C. Bates for Nature

Inventor and entrepreneur Jerry Paros and University of Washington scientists are monitoring undersea faults for movements and signs of the next catastrophic earthquake. A recent Nature article looks at Paros, who has donated $2 million to the UW, and the collaborative project he’s working on with researchers including the School of Oceanography’s Emily Roland and William Wilcock. Over the course of his career, Paros developed an ultra-precise quartz sensor for oil, gas and other industry applications. These sensors, which are capable of helping scientists detect movements on the seafloor to within one centimeter, are now being tested off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Paros hopes that his super-accurate gauges will be the heart of an early warning system designed to detect when an earthquake shifts the seafloor, triggering a tsunami.

Read More

New research finds that large earthquakes can trigger underwater landslides thousands of miles away, weeks or months after the quake occurs.

Researchers analyzing data from ocean-bottom seismometers off the Washington-Oregon coast tied a series of underwater landslides on the Cascadia Subduction Zone to a 2012 magnitude-8.6 earthquake in the Indian Ocean — more than 8,000 miles away. These underwater landslides occurred intermittently for nearly four months after the April earthquake. Previous work has shown that earthquakes can trigger additional earthquakes on other faults, but this study shows they can also initiate undersea landslides far from the quake.

“The basic assumption is that these marine landslides are generated by the local earthquakes,” said Paul Johnson, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and lead author of the new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “But what our paper said is, ‘No, you can generate them from earthquakes anywhere on the globe.’”

Read More

Nathan Bennett

In recent years, investigative journalists at the Associated Press, the Guardian, The New York Times and other outlets have uncovered human rights violations happening on fishing vessels around the world.

Their reporting shed a light on the widespread use of slave labor in Southeast Asia, as well as how that practice impacts the seafood that winds up on our plates in the U.S. The conditions these fisherman — and fisherwomen, who make up more than 50 percent of the world’s fisheries sector workforce — experience is unfathomable. They’re often tricked and trapped into working 22-hour days, in many cases without pay and while enduring abuse.

As a response to these investigations, marine scientists from the University of Washington, Conservation International and other organizations are calling for their peers to focus on social issues in the seafood industry. In an article published on June 1, they identify areas that would establish a global standard for social responsibility in the seafood industry, including:

• protecting human rights, dignity and respecting access to resources;
• ensuring equality and equitable opportunities to benefit;
• and improving food and livelihood security.

“We argue that committing to sustainable seafood sourcing and supply is also about ensuring people who work in the food business ― whether as harvesters or processors and packers ― have decent work,” said co-author Edward Allison, UW professor in the marine and environmental affairs. “It is also about ensuring communities who rely on the sea economically and culturally, particularly coastal indigenous communities, don’t have their harvest rights appropriated by powerful outside interests.”

Read More