Fishing, or jigging, for squid has become a popular winter sport on fishing piers around Puget Sound, as anglers dream of tasty ways to prepare their catch. Ken Chew, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, is quoted. 

An oral history of the career of William D. Ruckelshaus, the first and fifth administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, whose career parallels the growth of the environmental movement in the United States, is now available in three locations in the state of Washington.  Ruckelshaus is an Advisory Board member for the College of the Environment.  Read more here. 

With unusual weather in Europe and the Americas, low Arctic ice, droughts in Africa and Latin America, 2012 picks up where 2011 left off. Research from the Polar Science Center is cited.  Read more here. 

There’s a frog in Papua New Guinea that researchers announced this week is “the smallest known vertebrate species.” Theodore Pietsch, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, notes a fish that is smaller.  Read more here. 

At the end of 2011, Science Magazine invited essays to answer the question, “how will the practice of science change in your lifetime?” The purpose was, apparently, two-fold: to kick off a new section in Science Magazine, called NextGen VOICES, and to explore “how can we promote the wide-ranging conversations that will be necessary to meet [the] critical challenges [of a crowded and resource-limited world]?”