October 1, 2020
By James Lee, Science Communications Fellow
Libie Cain fishes Dungeness crab and albacore out of Westport. She grew up on Cooper Point by Evergreen State College and has an architectural degree. In fact, she was part of the team that helped build the Natural Resources Building in Olympia. She has also been a director for the Western Fishboat ...
Read MoreAugust 19, 2020
Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is excited to welcome Brandii Holmdahl as our new fisheries specialist.
In her new position, Brandii will focus on developing and coordinating strategies that advance the safety, economic success and environmental sustainability of Washington’s fisheries and seafood sectors. She will work on projects across the state, but with an emphasis on meeting the needs of fisheries-dependent communities on Washington’s southwest coast and the Lower Columbia River. “We’ve ...
Read MoreAugust 18, 2020
We are pleased to announce that Sam May, a doctoral student at the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (UW SAFS), is one of ten fellows selected for the 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship Program.
Sam grew up in Pennsylvania and inherited a deep love for wild ...
Read MoreUpdated September 20, 2021
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to impact all aspects of society, Washington Sea Grant (WSG) has been mobilizing its resources to support communities and stakeholders across the state:
USDA Pandemic Response and Safety Grant Program
The Pandemic Response and Safety (PRS) Grant Program provides funding to help small specialty crop producers, food processors, manufacturers, distributors and farmers markets recover costs incurred by responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including for measures to protect workers. This program is authorized and ...
Read MoreMarch 16, 2020
In February, several Washington Sea Grant (WSG) staff attended the 2nd annual Seafood Day in Olympia, where over 300 state representatives and their staff sampled a wide variety of local Washington seafoods between sessions. This event, organized by Dale Beasley, president of the Coalition for Coastal Fisheries, along with many other fishermen, showcased shrimp cocktail, fresh-caught crab, oysters on the half shell, steamed clams, clam chowder with razor clams, and baked and smoked salmon — all harvested or caught just off ...
Read MoreMarch 11, 2020
By Bobbie Buzzell, WSG Science Communications Fellow
Ocean food webs are complex and often difficult to study — but breaking down every connection is important to understanding all predation pressures acting on a single species. These pressures often butt heads with commercial and recreational fisheries, and Pacific salmon have a history of such contention. Off the coast of Washington, salmon are predated on by Steller sea lions, harbor seals, and endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW). Previous research on ...
Read MoreOctober 17, 2019
Fisheries managers typically strive to strike a delicate balance between two, often competing, types of needs: the needs for fishermen’s profits and the needs for the planet. But in 1994, entrepreneur John Elkington posited that true sustainability requires consideration of a third “P” — the needs of the people. In making this argument, he coined the term “the triple bottom line.”
In a new study, an interdisciplinary group of researchers used Pacific herring in Haida Gwaii, British ...
Read MoreIn the 1990s, the endangered status of the short-tailed albatross catalyzed efforts to reduce the number of birds accidentally killed as bycatch in Alaska, home to the country’s biggest fisheries. Marine fisheries scientist Ed Melvin, at Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington, and research associate Kim Dietrich, an independent contractor, were at the forefront of a collaborative research effort that led to Alaska’s longline fisheries adopting streamer lines in 2002, a technology that is towed behind vessels ...
Read MoreDecember 18, 2018
The ability to smell is critical for salmon. They depend on scent to avoid predators, sniff out prey and find their way home at the end of their lives when they return to the streams where they hatched to spawn and die.
New research from the University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center shows this powerful sense of smell might be in trouble as carbon emissions continue to be absorbed by our ocean. Ocean ...
Read MoreOctober, 2018
This month, Washington Sea Grant joins in on Seafood Month celebrations with weekly stories from our programs that support fisheries, aquaculture and the people who are at the center of them.
Week One: Fisheries and People
The theme of the week is fisheries and people. Read about WSG’s partnership with Olympic Coast tribes to study their social and ecological vulnerabilities to ocean acidification: https://wsg.washington.edu/partnering-with-indigenous-communities-to-anticipate-and-adapt-to-ocean-change/
Week Two: Seafood Safety
In honor of this week’s theme – seafood safety – read about the ...
Read MoreJuly 26, 2018
In 2016, Washington Sea Grant marine fisheries scientist Ed Melvin published a study on whether laser light can prevent seabird bycatch in North Pacific fisheries. Since then, Melvin has encouraged and supported researchers at Purdue Universtiy to study the risk of injuries to birds when lasers are used to deter brids on farms.
Read more about their study and Melvin’s research in the NW News Network.
Read MoreMarch 1, 2018
The Sea Grant programs in Alaska and Washington are releasing a new, updated edition of the popular Fishermen’s Direct Marketing Manual. As the business climate of the seafood industry evolves, many fishermen are choosing to directly market their catch in hopes of capturing more of its value so the publication’s release is timely.
Hard copies of the 5th edition of the manual, edited by Terry Johnson, are now available through Alaska Sea Grant’s online bookstore. The ...
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