Marine and Coastal Science
Communication is a two-way street; when one speaks, the other listens, and tries to interpret the sometimes subtle signals in the language.
But when you’re a geophysicist, and what you’re listening to are the not-so-subtle signals of one of the most active fault systems in the world –…
In June 1969, Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, polluted with oil and chemicals from the city's steel mills, caught fire, and the images of city fire crews fighting a river so fouled with pollution that it could actually catch fire set in motion what would become in 1972 the Clean Water Act, federal…
The plentiful seaweed off the shores of Fidalgo and other surrounding islands has concentrated contaminants, according to a study published recently by a team at Western Washington University.
It's the same seaweed that is often eaten by area tribal members and kayakers looking for a…
The toxicity levels of seaweed at two Skagit County sites were included in a Salish Sea study done by Western Washington University researchers.
The study, published in the scientific journal PLoS One on Sept. 23, looked at three species of edible seaweed at 43 Salish…
A new study just published by researchers at Western Washington University (WWU) reports concentrations of up to 162 chemical contaminants in three species of edible seaweeds gathered in the Salish Sea.
Seaweeds are consumed by many people living on or near the Salish Sea – from Indigenous peoples revitalizing the ancient foodways of their cultures to those simply seeking a readily available and highly nutritious protein source - but little is known about whether contaminants in the Sea’s…
Many people think that the ocean’s greatest mysteries are in the depths, but one Western student is searching for them in the shallows of the Salish Sea.
Lucy Greeley, a fourth-year Marine and Coastal Science major, is studying the bioluminescent plankton in the waters in and around…
Lucy Greeley is going to spend her summer researching the glowing bioluminescence in Bellingham Bay, and you can too.
Bellingham’s Community Boating Center has teamed up with Western Washington University on a new citizen science initiative: Visitors who join the nonprofit’s…
Saving endangered Pinto abalone is hard in part because locating their habitat is time-consuming and, as a result, expensive. The process involves dive crews on the water in search of suitable locations, but there are only so many dives a team can do in a day. A recent SeaDoc-funded project is…
It is the water that has sustained the people of western Washington forever, but researchers now say the Salish Sea is under “unrelenting pressure” put on it by 150 years of human development.
“It’s an incredible place. People come from all over the world to see the Salish Sea,” said…