University of Washington

The world’s oceans provide an important source of nutrition for more than a billion people and employment for hundreds of millions. But is it sustainable?

In the past 10 years, a series of international collaborations have evaluated the impact of fishing around the world, and the results are contrary to popular perception: The abundance of fish in the oceans appears to be stable overall — not decreasing — and fish numbers are increasing in countries that are willing to reduce fishing pressure when necessary.

Aquatic and Fishery Sciences‘ Ray Hilborn is an leading expert in the field, and will share what he’s learned about the environmental impact of harvesting food from the seas compared to other food sources at the upcoming University Faculty Lecture. Hilborn’s “Sustaining Food from the Seas” lecture will take place on Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 7 p.m. at Kane Hall. This lecture is free and is open to the public.

In advance of his lecture, we caught up with Ray for a quick Q&A:

If there’s one takeaway that your lecture inspires in attendees, what do you hope it will be?

“That most fisheries in the U.S. and many other countries are well-managed and produce high-quality food at a low environmental cost compared to other foods.”

When did you decide you wanted to study fisheries?

“When I realized that skills I had could be used in helping manage resources that were important to a lot of people. When I understood that my knowledge and skills had important practical applications.”

As an early career scientist, what was the biggest question facing fisheries management?

“In the 1970s, the real question was whether we could manage fisheries sustainably. That has largely been solved for developed countries, and we are doing a good job. Now the question is how do we bring sustainability to countries with much less science and management capacity.”

You’ve produced a volume of important research during your career. What work are you most proud of?

“The books — a friend once told me that if you want to get tenure, publish papers and if you want to change the world, write books that help other people do better science.”

What advice do you have for someone wanting to make an informed decision about the seafood they eat?

“Eat local seafood.”

What is one thing people might be surprised to learn about you?

“One, that I’m a terrestrial ecologist by training and two, I’m usually the first person to get seasick when I go out on the ocean.”

More about Ray Hilborn’s University Faculty Lecture

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Bonnie Light/University of Washington

Arctic sea ice in recent decades has declined even faster than predicted by most models of climate change. Many scientists have suspected that the trend now underway is a combination of global warming and natural climate variability.

A new study finds that a substantial chunk of summer sea ice loss in recent decades was due to natural variability in the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean. The study, from the University of Washington, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and federal scientists, is published March 13 in Nature Climate Change.

“Anthropogenic forcing is still dominant — it’s still the key player,” said first author Qinghua Ding, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who holds an affiliate position at the UW, where he began the work as a research scientist in the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “But we found that natural variability has helped to accelerate this melting, especially over the past 20 years.”

The paper builds on previous work by Ding and other UW scientists that found changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean have in recent decades created a “hot spot” over Greenland and the Canadian Arctic that has boosted warming in that region. The research was funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Tamaki Foundation. Other co-authors are Stephen Po-Chedley, Eduardo Blanchard-Wrigglesworth and Ryan Eastman in the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences; Eric Steig in the UW Department of Earth and Space Sciences; and Michelle L’Heureux, Kristin Harnos and Qin Zhang at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

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Bernard Spragg/Flickr

Black swan events are rare and surprising occurrences that happen without notice and often wreak havoc on society. The metaphor has been used to describe banking collapses, devastating earthquakes and other major surprises in financial, social and natural systems.

A new analysis by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University is the first to document that black swan events also occur in animal populations and usually manifest as massive, unexpected die-offs. The results were published online March 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“No one has really looked at the prevalence of these black swan events in animal population abundance before,” said lead author Sean Anderson, a UW postdoctoral researcher in aquatic and fishery sciences. “People associate the phrase with financial market crashes, and being able to take that term and apply it to another system gives context about what we’re seeing in animal populations.”

The researchers analyzed data from more than 600 animal populations, including mammals, birds, fishes and insects. They found that drastic changes in populations occurred in about 4 percent of the animals they surveyed, most commonly in birds.

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South Florida Water Management District

“Resilience” is a buzzword often used in scientific literature to describe how animals, plants and landscapes can persist under climate change. It’s typically considered a good quality, suggesting that those with resilience can withstand or adapt as the climate continues to change.

But when it comes to actually figuring out what makes a species or an entire ecosystem resilient ― and how to promote that through restoration or management ― there is a lack of consensus in the scientific community.

A new paper by the University of Washington and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center aims to provide clarity among scientists, resource managers and planners on what ecological resilience means and how it can be achieved. The study, published this month in the journal PLOS ONE, is the first to examine the topic in the context of ecological restoration and identify ways that resilience can be measured and achieved at different scales.

“I was really interested in translating a broad concept like resilience into management or restoration actions,” said lead author Britta Timpane-Padgham, a fisheries biologist at Northwest Fisheries Science Center who completed the study as part of her graduate degree in marine and environmental affairs at the UW. “I wanted to do something that addressed impacts of climate change and connected the science with management and restoration efforts.”

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