Safe and Sustainable Seafood

Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Maggie Michaels of the High School Seafood Butchery program

September 6, 2024

By Brian McGreal, WSG Science Communications Fellow

In the spring of 2024, students at high schools up and down the Oregon coast engaged with a different sort of education. Armed with sharpened knives and fish scalers, high school students learned to debone albacore, filet salmon and shuck oysters under the auspices of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association’s newly launched Seafood Butchery Pilot Program. Designed to increase young people’s awareness and interest in jobs in the ...

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SEP

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Paralytic shellfish poisoning on the Washington Coast

September 3, 2024

An update on the recent shellfish poisoning event and the safety protocols in place

By Ashleigh Epps, WSG aquaculture specialist

In late May 2024, the Pacific coasts of Oregon and Washington experienced a paralytic shellfish poisoning harmful algal bloom event. Thirty-one people became sick in Oregon over Memorial Day weekend, which triggered increased paralytic shellfish poisoning testing and the closures of harvest areas by the Department of Health.

No illnesses occurred in Washington. The last time Willapa Bay ...

3
SEP

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Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Rob Seitz, fisherman, poet and business owner

July 24, 2024

By Brian McGreal, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Recently, Rob Seitz’s sister wished him a happy 31st wedding anniversary and asked what he and his wife Tiffani would be doing to celebrate. “I told her, ‘We’re working with our family serving fish to our community in a business we built together.’”

From Seitz’s upbringing in Alaska to working through the Pacific groundfish collapse of the 2000s to operating his own vessel in Oregon and California, fishing has always been ...

24
JUL

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Washington Sea Grant receives new grant to support coastal resilience

February 12, 2024

Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is pleased to announce that it will partner with the Washington state departments of Ecology, Transportation, and Fish and Wildlife to support coastal resilience work as part of a new $850,000 grant. The grant comes from the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Read More

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FEB

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Who brings your seafood to you? An interview with Thomas Foster-Kibbler and Heather Auld of Foster Fisheries

January 24, 2024

By Alison Lorenz, WSG Science Writer

Before Thomas Foster-Kibbler got into commercial fishing, he wanted to be an EMT on a firefighting crew. He was living in sunny Los Angeles County, training to help others. The problem? He was spending all his spare time and cash sport fishing on charter boats and spending, as he says, “too much money to go fishing all the time.”

That’s when something clicked. Foster-Kibbler decided to try a career in fishing commercially, and found ...

24
JAN

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Washington Sea Grant receives federal funding to advance resilience in coastal and fishing communities

January 10, 2024

Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is pleased to receive federal funds through NOAA Sea Grant in support of its work to advance resilience in coastal and fishing communities throughout Washington state.

The WSG project seeks to enhance Washington coastal resilience in several ways. These include but are not limited to: broadening outreach to coastal communities on coast-specific climate hazards; connecting marine and coastal resource managers with funding opportunities to address coastal hazards; communicating hazard risk reduction ...

10
JAN

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The National Sea Grant College Program announces federal funding opportunity to advance U.S. aquaculture

December 12, 2023

Subject to the availability of funding, Sea Grant anticipates $5,000,000 to $6,000,000 will be available for research projects and programs that will develop and refine methods, protocols, techniques, and/or strategies to enhance the production of one or more life stages of aquaculture species with the overall goal of improving the efficiency, output, and profitability of commercial coastal, marine, or Great Lakes region aquaculture businesses.

Total funding for this competition includes approximately $5,000,000-$6,000,000 to support 4-12 projects for up to ...

12
DEC

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Teri King starts a new chapter

December 6, 2023

After working at Washington Sea Grant (WSG) for more than 30 years, Teri King, aquaculture and marine water quality specialist, has moved on to her next chapter.

King joined WSG in 1990. Over the next three decades, she built an innovative program of outreach and technical assistance around the issues of shellfish aquaculture and Puget Sound water quality, reaching thousands who shared her passion for healthy marine waters and resources. Her program has ...

6
DEC

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Washington Sea Grant receives federal funding to train the next generation of the aquaculture workforce

August 30, 2023

Person walking across an oyster-filled tide flat. Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is pleased to have a project selected for funding through the NOAA Sea Grant Aquaculture Workforce Development Support Projects competition.

The WSG project seeks to revive a previously successful crew training program by updating it to reflect current industry needs and adding ...

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AUG

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Newly expanded and revised, ‘Heaven on the Half Shell’ tells the story of the oyster in the Pacific Northwest

From the Summer 2023 Sea Star

The second edition of this classic text is now in bookstores

Generations of oyster farmers have weathered many challenges to continue the harvest. Their stories are braided together with significant history that have defined the modern-day Pacific Northwest: the arrival of white ...

11
APR

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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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MAR

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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 ...

25
JAN

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Learn the Skills to Land a Job Fishing Salmon in Alaska

January 25, 2022

The new Purse Seine Vessel Crew Member Training Program will hold its first session in April 2022 — register online at www.gigharborboatshop.org

The Gig Harbor BoatShop and Washington Sea Grant are launching the Purse Seine Vessel Crew Member Training Program, or “Crew School,” designed to provide instruction on the fundamental skills needed to work on a commercial fishing vessel. Led by experienced captains and crew, the hands-on curriculum will be taught in the classroom, aboard commercial fishing vessels ...

25
JAN

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Looking Underwater to Uncover the Marine Environment of Shellfish Aquaculture

From the winter 2021–2022 Sea Star print newsletter

Researchers use Go-Pro cameras to document life beneath the surface on shellfish farms

By Hannah Jeffries, WSG Science Communications Fellow

Shellfish growers spend countless hours on the tideflats each year to produce sustainable seafood for everyone to enjoy. All of this time out on the tideflats gives growers an extensive understanding of the environment around their farms, including the other organisms that live there. But their eyes can only take in what goes on ...

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DEC

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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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NOV

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