A University of Washington research team has captured color photographs of what could be a previously undocumented species of chambered nautilus, a cephalopod mollusk often classified as a “living fossil,” in the waters off American Samoa in the South Pacific. Peter Ward/UW A Samoan nautilus about 2 miles offshore is seen in this photo from February 2013. At this location, the water was about 1,200 feet deep and the nautilus was at a depth of about 75 feet. 

When you look around the streets of Seattle, you can expect to see less concrete and more greenery being put in over the next 12 years.  The City is planning to dramatically increase its use of green infrastructure to treat stormwater runoff.  Read more about these plans on KPLU. 

The South Pole Ice Core (SPICE) project aims to retrieve an ice core 1,500 meters long beginning in the 2014-15 austral summer field season.  College of the Environment’s faculty member Eric Steig is co-leading the project.  Read more about this project and their goals in the Antarctic Sun. 

Check out the first in a seven-part series titled, “Students of Sustainability: How Higher Education Can Teach the World To Be More Planet-Minded” written by Michael K. Young, President of the University of Washington.  You can read the entire piece on the Huffington Post. 

Back in the late ‘90s, a teacher made a boo-boo. After completing a lesson on crayfish, the teacher dumped them into Pine Lake. Unfortunately, these weren’t ordinary crayfish. Well, not ordinary for this part of the country.  And so, the red swamp crayfish started taking over the crayfish niche in the lake, according to Julian Olden, a freshwater ecologist with the University of Washington.