The southern Puget Sound’s struggling population of orcas could lose federal protection if a new effort succeeds at removing the whales from endangered species list. Orcas in Puget Sound were placed on the federal endangered species list in 2005. A report last year concluded Puget Sound orcas were inbreeding so much that their genetic diversity could be diminishing, further jeopardizing their ability to survive. 

According to a new study, 19 huge earthquakes have occurred over the past 10,000 years along the Pacific Northwest’s Cascadia Subduction Zone, each typically 8.7 to 9.2 on the Richter scale.  This most comprehensive study of earthquake history off the Pacific Northwest coast suggests that there is a 40% chance of such an event happening in the next 50 years — but the probability is different in different locations. 

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.