May 28, 2015

UW oceanographers shed light on the hidden world of marine microbes

Photo: California Academy of Sciences / Flickr

Tiny marine microbes produce half of Earth’s oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, and even regulate the productivity of fisheries. Scientists are only beginning to understand the ecology of these microscopic creatures, but discoveries made by researchers at the College of the Environment’s School of Oceanography are informing our understanding of their hidden world. Oceanographer Ginger Armbrust and her team, using genetic and molecular toolsets, recently found that single-celled algae called diatoms grow faster when a hormone released by bacteria is present.

Chemical tags in ear bones track Alaska's Bristol Bay salmon

Scientists from Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and other institutions are learning a lot about where Chinook salmon swim in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region through chemical signatures recorded in their ear bones. Similar to a tree’s growth rings, this bone—called an otolith—accumulates layers as the fish grows. Acting as a little recorder, each layer of the otolith corresponds to the unique chemical signatures of the waters in which they swam.

New knowledge and technology help scientists track harmful algae

Though the waters of Puget Sound are full of beneficial algae, which provide oxygen, food, and shelter for other creatures, it’s the nasty ones that usually make the news, when they "bloom" into toxic pools, harming fish and humans. Now, researchers working with Washington Sea Grant have started to narrow in on harmful algae’s behaviors, and are developing some slick techniques that they hope will lead to much more effective detection and monitoring.

UW ecologist and citizen scientists lead the charge against invasive crayfish

There’s no time like the present for Pine Lake residents—an invasive species of crayfish has taken hold in their backyard and community members are mobilizing to give them the boot. Even though it means setting aside several hours a week during western Washington’s best weather months, these citizen scientists swap their fishing poles for cage traps, hiking boots for clipboards, and swimsuits for scientific instruments to restore the lake’s ecosystem.

Puget Sound’s clingfish could inspire better medical devices, whale tags

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories are studying the Northern clingfish, a finger-sized fish that scoots around the coastal waters of Puget Sound and can use suction forces to hold up to 150 times its own body weight. They’re trying to better understand how clingfish summon such massive power in wet, slimy environments—something current industrial suction devices can’t do—and if the biomechanics of clingfish could be instructive in designing surgical instruments and, possibly, a new way to tag whales without puncturing their skin with darts.