Shannon Point Marine Center

Dive shop Adventures Down Under will close next month after the death of its owner, Ron Akeson. His family is planning to open a new dive shop this summer in the same location, 2821 Meridian St.

The new shop will have more dive travel and underwater photographic art.

The Seattle Aquarium sits on Pier 59, above the cold, dark waters of Puget Sound. As children run inside its wood-beamed atrium, Lesanna Lahner peers into the largest display tank. A few salmon swim idly past barren rocks. "This used to be full of sea stars," says Lahner, the aquarium…

Scientists are making some headway in figuring out what is killing millions of sea stars in the waters off the Pacific coast, from British Columbia to Mexico.
While a definitive answer eludes them, researchers suggest a pathogen -- either bacterial or viral -- is responsible for the death…

Erika McPhee-Shaw, who grew up in the home of an ice scientist, explored a variety of interests before she emerged with what the affable scientist calls her mission to "watch the water" for important environmental developments.

Erika McPhee-Shaw is the new director of Western Washington University's Shannon Point Marine Center.

McPhee-Shaw will start at Western June 15, succeeding longtime SPMC Director Steve Sulkin, who has retired.

To the non-scientist, it looks obvious: The decline in marine life at the bottom of Bellingham Bay is what we would expect in a bay used as a dump for industrial waste, human sewage, garbage and polluted stormwater over many decades.

But marine researchers say it's not that simple.…

Jellyfish blooms are on the rise and taking over the ocean, experts say. They may not look scary, but they pose a serious threat to regions that are just now entering their tourism seasons.
A horde of jellyfish forced the shutdown of a nuclear power plant in Sweden earlier this…

A "jellyfish bloom" may sound pretty, but it can get ugly fast. A swarm of moon jellyfish from the Baltic Sea were sucked into the cooling pipes of a nuclear power plant on the Swedish coast last week, shutting down one of the three units for four days. In 2008, another such "…

On the first day of class, the school was empty.

No books. No labs. No lecture.

Instead, the faculty and their students were on a beach near Deception Pass State Park.

The 90 students from Ocean Research…