Jan 13, 2020

Fisheries management is actually working, global analysis shows

Ray Hilborn in a speed boat on Bristol Bay.

Nearly half of the fish caught worldwide are from stocks that are scientifically monitored and, on average, are increasing in abundance. Effective management appears to be the main reason these stocks are at sustainable levels or successfully rebuilding. That is the main finding of an international project led by the University of Washington to compile and analyze data from fisheries around the world.

Connecting society and the natural world

Nives Dolšak writes often on big environmental issues, and frequently publishes in the popular press about how society connects to the natural world. We sat down with Dolšak, who is a professor and the director of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, and asked her why she chooses to write about the social side of all things environment, and how she approaches writing about such topics for broad consumption.

Life could have emerged from lakes with high phosphorus

Zebras and flamingoes in front of Lake Magadi

Life as we know it requires phosphorus. It’s one of the six main chemical elements of life, it forms the backbone of DNA and RNA molecules, acts as the main currency for energy in all cells and anchors the lipids that separate cells from their surrounding environment. But how did a lifeless environment on the early Earth supply this key ingredient?

Resident orcas’ appetite likely reason for decline of big Chinook salmon

Killer whales prefer to eat only the biggest, juiciest Chinook salmon they can find. The larger the fish, the more energy a whale can get for its meal. Each year these top ocean predators consume more than 2.5 million adult Chinook salmon along the West Coast. Except for the endangered southern resident population in Washington, all other fish-eating orca populations that live along the coast, called “residents,” are growing in number.

Barrels of ancient Antarctic air aim to track history of rare gas

Ancient air samples from one of Antarctica’s snowiest ice core sites may add a new molecule to the record of changes to Earth’s atmosphere over the past century and a half, since the Industrial Revolution began burning fossil fuels on a massive scale. While carbon dioxide and methane are well known, researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Rochester are part of a team working to trace a much rarer gas, present at less than one in a trillion molecules.