State of the Oyster Study volunteers invite you to join them on August 29 to look at bacterial contamination on privately owned beaches in Hood Canal and throughout Puget Sound. Property owners will collect shellfish on their privately owned beaches and bring them to convenient drop-off locations where volunteers, Washington Sea Grant staff, and WSU Extension staff will collect the samples and send them to a lab for testing. 

Salmon-habitat watersheds need a good mix of steep, cold-running streams and slower, meandering streams of warmer water to keep options open for salmon adapted to reproduce better in one setting than the other, new research shows. Preserving such a varied landscape doesn’t just serve salmon, it also ensures an all-summer buffet that brown bears, gulls and other animals need to sustain themselves the rest of the year. 

With about a month and a half remaining in the Arctic melt season, sea ice cover continues to decline at a rapid pace, and is currently on par with where the 2007 record melt season stood at the same time of year. Read more about it here; UW’s Polar Science Center is mentioned. 

The contest doesn’t even start until tomorrow (August 1st), but the UW Botanic Gardens is already receiving beautiful photos by the Arboretum’s Art in the Park Campers. Learn more about this great opportunity, and check out the work of these students, here!