Category: Research

Puget Sound ecosystem holding on, but recovery remains uncertain, says latest status report

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Efforts to restore ecological health to Puget Sound have largely failed to meet recovery goals, yet fish and wildlife populations are still hanging on, according to a new report that describes many struggling populations as neither increasing nor decreasing to a significant extent. The latest State of the Sound report, released last week by the Puget Sound Partnership, reveals the ongoing difficulty of recovering the Puget Sound ecosystem in the face of rapid population growth, climate change and a legacy of pollution and habitat damage. Yet the report, produced every […]

A no-death census year for Puget Sound’s orcas, with observations about a recent shift to more female births

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For the first time since Census Year 1993, no deaths were reported this year among the Southern Resident killer whales, which frequent Puget Sound, according to the official census report. Two new births were reported among the whales, increasing the population from 73 to 75. I would also like to share some potentially hopeful information about what appears to be a shift in the male-to-female ratio at birth. While worthy of note, the finding of no deaths may be more a coincidence of the census calendar than a suggestion that […]

Warm ocean waters work their way into Puget Sound

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Unusually warm waters in the Pacific Ocean — now pushing up against the Washington coast — are keeping oceanographers on alert for changes that could reverberate through the food web, potentially affecting fish, birds and marine mammals in coastal waters and in Puget Sound. Rising ocean temperatures may be related to recent sightings of warm-water fish not usually seen in the Northwest, including a bluefin tuna that washed up on Orcas Island and large schools of mackeral observed in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Worrisome levels of domoic acid, […]

Salish Sea Model tracks pollution, currents and climate change

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This article is the latest in a series about computer models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. Today, we look at the Salish Sea Model, one of several models in the region helping to predict water circulation, water quality and food-web relationships. Read the full series: Where and how the water moves The waters of Puget Sound contain complex chemical mixtures arising from natural and human sources. The waters are blended and pushed around by currents and other physical forces, creating conditions that vary from place to place. […]

Prey and predators create varying life-or-death conditions for salmon, as shown with Atlantis model

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This article is the latest in a series about computer models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. As scientists uncover more and more information about a particular ecosystem, computer modelers are often eager to put that raw data to good use in complex models tuned to local conditions. One highly acclaimed model, called Atlantis, has been applied to more than 40 ecosystems around the world. In Puget Sound, Atlantis has been used to study the food web to determine whether salmon are more threatened by predators or by […]

Quantitative models, including Ecopath, take food web studies to a higher level of analysis

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. In the early 1980s, NOAA scientist Jeffrey Polovina and fellow researchers at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Hawaii developed what they called the Ecopath model, designed to describe […]

Researchers use a qualitative network model to test ways to boost production at shellfish farms

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. The skeletal beginnings of nearly all models is a conceptual understanding of the basic workings of the system being studied: Who are the important actors, and what are their […]

Before supercomputers, a structural model helped scientists predict currents in Puget Sound

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As part of a project exploring the technical uncertainties surrounding Puget Sound water quality, we are reviewing how computer models are used to advance our understanding of natural systems. This blog post is part of a series focused on different models and their uses within the Puget Sound ecosystem. The project is jointly sponsored by King County and the Puget Sound Institute. One of the first working models of Puget Sound was a scaled-down concrete reproduction of the regional topography, with actual water running through channels, around islands and into bays, […]

Ed Kolodziej among finalists for Frontiers Planet Prize

Wearing safety goggles, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe (far left), Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland and Congressman Derek Kilmer watch Dr. Ed Kolodziej as he demonstrates the innovative methods researchers at UW Tacoma's Center for Urban Waters used to identify tire derivative 6PPD-quinone as a killer of coho salmon. Photo by Jeff Rice.
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Puget Sound Institute affiliate Dr. Ed Kolodziej is one of 20 finalists for the prestigious Frontiers Planet Prize honoring “impactful research breakthroughs” in global sustainability science. Kolodziej was selected by an international jury as the United States representative earning him the title of National Champion and advancing him to compete for a prize of one million Swiss francs (about $1.1 million dollars) to support future research. Recipients of the award will be announced on April 27th in Montreux, Switzerland. The prize is sponsored by the Frontiers Research Foundation, a non-profit […]

Inbreeding hinders population recovery among endangered Southern Resident killer whales

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While a scarcity of Chinook salmon and other environmental factors may be pushing the Southern Resident killer whales toward extinction, a new genetics study has revealed that inbreeding has been exerting a powerful, overriding influence upon the small, genetically isolated population. The weakened genetic condition of the Southern Resident orcas, which frequent Puget Sound, could help explain why their numbers have generally declined over the past 25 years, while other orca populations in Alaska and British Columbia have been growing at remarkable rates. Experts have long suspected that inbreeding could […]

Findings and reports: February 2023

Image of San Juan Islands from the Salish Sea Model
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Salish Sea Model provides insights on circulation and residence times The amount of time water circulates and “resides” in Puget Sound is of intense interest to regulators and emergency response officials who want to understand how quickly wastewater is flushed out of Puget Sound and into the ocean. A paper in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science reports that contrary to expectation, flushing of deeper waters may take longer in wintertime in large fjord-like basins such as Hood Canal. A new, higher resolution version of the Salish Sea Model […]

Remembering Ken Balcomb and his extraordinary life with killer whales

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I’m still adjusting to the world of killer whales without Ken Balcomb. Ken, who died Dec. 15 at age 82, was a constant presence throughout my career as an environmental reporter. His presence inspired many others among the so-called “killer whale community,” made of experts, observers and those who simply love and follow the stories of our beloved orcas. Ken, who I called the dean of killer whale research, founded the Center for Whale Research and established an amazing 46-year record of every birth and death among the Southern Resident […]