Washington Sea Grant Receives Continued Federal Funding for Aquaculture Collaboratives

September 22, 2022

The Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative and West Coast Aquaculture Collaborative are among the projects to receive support for another two years

NOAA Sea Grant is continuing support for 11 advanced aquaculture collaboratives initially funded as part of Sea Grant’s 2019 National Aquaculture Initiative. Two of these projects are led by Washington Sea Grant: the Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative and the West Coast Aquaculture Collaborative. Washington Sea Grant is also a partner on the Seaweed Hub (led by Connecticut Sea ...

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WSG News Blog

Debris from Shellfish Aquaculture Finds New Life as Crab Gauges

From the Autumn 2022 Sea Star

Washington Sea Grant supported an innovative pilot project repurposing marine debris, transforming it into a useful tool for recreational crabbers

By Benjamin Haagen, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Aquaculture in the Salish Sea brings both benefits and challenges to coastal communities and ecosystems. The yellow aquaculture rope commonly used in shellfish farming is contributing to a key environmental issue facing the world today: plastics pollution. This issue is being addressed in a novel way by Nicole Baker, ...

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WSG News Blog

New Staff: WSG Welcomes Michelle Lepori-Bui

March 30, 2022

Washington Sea Grant is thrilled to welcome Michelle Lepori-Bui, marine water quality specialist, to the team.

Michelle partners with Native tribes, aquaculture businesses, natural resource managers, environmental education centers, and other community groups and volunteers to monitor and address marine water quality issues in Washington. She provides technical assistance and support to the SoundToxins program, which focuses ...

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WSG News Blog

New story map unites sea gardens around the Pacific and shows the importance of revitalizing Indigenous mariculture practices for food sovereignty and resilience

February 17, 2022

See the interactive, “living” story map at www.seagardens.net

Indigenous People have been stewarding the ocean for thousands of years. This stewardship has appeared in many different forms around the world, all of which represent a reciprocal relationship between humans and the sea rooted in deep place-based knowledge. From octopus houses in Haida Gwaii to fish ponds in Hawaiʻi, an Indigenous mariculture renaissance is making waves as groups across the Pacific seek to ...

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WSG News Blog

Washington Sea Grant Receives Funding from The Builders Initiative to Support Restorative Aquaculture

January 26, 2022

Washington Sea Grant will use the $400,000 grant to further two key projects: the Cross-Pacific Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative and the Washington Seaweed Collaborative

From tribal fishermen exercising their treaty fishing rights to oyster farmers in south Puget Sound, seafood harvesting and aquaculture are vital to Pacific Northwest culture and commerce. However, forces including climate change, ocean acidification and coastal development threaten these sources of sustenance and tradition. Restorative aquaculture — that is, sustainable ocean farming ...

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JAN

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WSG News Blog

Swinomish Receives Funding to Build the First Modern-Day Clam Garden in the U.S.

November 9, 2021

Federal grants will enable the Tribal Community to revitalize the ancient Indigenous mariculture practice

La Conner, Wash. – In the 1990s, members of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community began to notice that they weren’t finding as many native littleneck clams on their traditional harvest sites. With climate change and ocean acidification—issues that particularly affect shellfish—this trend was likely to worsen. The Tribe realized that these and other changes could continue to affect their access to traditional foods, cultural practices and, ...

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WSG News Blog

Save the Date! More Details to Follow

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WSG News Blog

The 7R’s of Integrating Tribal and Indigenous Partnerships Into Aquaculture Literacy

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WSG News Blog

aquaculture, aquaculture literacy, collaboration, education, eeBLUE, indigenous, indigenous communities, integration, NOAA, partnership, perspectives

Impacts from the Summer 2021 Heatwave on Washington Shellfish

July 21, 2021

The record-breaking heat that hit the Pacific Northwest from June 23 to 28, 2021, caused harm to many intertidal shellfish and invertebrate species on Washington beaches.

On many beaches, species such as cockles, varnish clams, butter clams, and native littleneck clams—normally buried out of sight—popped to the surface of the substrate in large numbers. Manila clams were also impacted in some areas. Surfaced clams were observed to be gaping, a sign of stress, or had already died from the ...

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JUL

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WSG News Blog

Researchers Discover Yessotoxins, Produced by Certain Phytoplankton, to be a Culprit Behind Summer Mass Shellfish Mortality Events in Washington

June 17, 2021

Back in the summers of 2018 and 2019, the shellfish industry in Washington state was rocked by mass mortalities of its crops.

“It was oysters, clams, cockles — all bivalve species in some bays were impacted,” said Teri King, aquaculture and marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant based at the University of Washington. “They were dying, and nobody knew why.”

Now, King and partners from NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Northwest ...

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JUN

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WSG News Blog

New Indigenous Aquaculture Website

May 20, 2021

The Cross-Pacific Indigenous Aquaculture Collaborative has launched a new website to inform and bring communities together to enhance and grow sustainable coastal food systems.

Visit the website here!

Did you know that Hawaiian fish ponds once produced 400-600 pounds of fish per acre each year? Sustainable indigenous aquaculture has endured for millennia, and these systems will continue to unite ecosystems and cultures, as well as expand our food connections throughout the Pacific.

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MAY

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WSG News Blog

New Video: Swinomish Community Visits a Clam Garden

April 28, 2021

“Our coast Salish people had methods of cultivating the natural environment to support the ecosystems but also to feed the people,” says Alana Quintasket, senator for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “And a clam garden is one example of that.” However, clam gardens have been dormant for hundreds of years in many of places that they used to exist. The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community is currently working toward reviving the ancient mariculture practice in modern-day Washington.

Not only does this ...

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APR

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WSG News Blog

Estimating the Socioeconomic Benefits of SoundToxins, an Early Warning System for Harmful Algal Blooms in Puget Sound

February 3, 2021

Washington Sea Grant, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the Washington Department of Health received federal funding to quantify SoundToxins impact

Washington Sea Grant (WSG), the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) and the Washington Department of Health (WDOH) have received a grant for $279,926 from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Centers for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (NCCOS CSCOR) to estimate the socioeconomic benefits of SoundToxins, an early warning system for harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Puget Sound.

In ...

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FEB

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WSG News Blog

Washington Sea Grant Receives Federal Funding to Track Aquaculture Production

January 27, 2021

National Sea Grant awarded $4.7 million total to strengthen the economics of the U.S. aquaculture industry

Washington Sea Grant (WSG) has been awarded $376,990 in federal funding for a project to collect and analyze data that will assist in sustainable shellfish aquaculture management and development. This is one of 12 research projects selected by the National Sea Grant College Program to advance the understanding of the economics of aquaculture businesses and provide the industry with important market information to ...

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JAN

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WSG News Blog

Director’s Note: Our Commitment to Safe and Sustainable Seafood

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WSG News Blog