Front Page Featured Items Archive | Puget Sound Institute

October 27, 2025

Experts expect the recent arrival of chum salmon to bring orcas back to Puget Sound

UPDATE: Monday, Nov. 3 Whales return to Central Puget Sound without youngest calf All three pods of southern resident killer whales traveled into Central Puget Sound Sunday, making it as far south as the southern end of Vashon Island, if not farther. The past few days, various whales have been spotted in the San Juan […]

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October 1, 2025

What is driving ongoing contamination in Commencement Bay?

Despite more than four decades of a Superfund cleanup along Tacoma’s industrial Tideflats, research suggests that large amounts of toxic chemicals like PCBs and PBDEs may still be entering the waterway. Our affiliates at the Center for Urban Waters are co-leading a new project to identify contaminant hotspots. When it was first designated in 1983, […]

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July 30, 2025

Collected in Partnership with The Whale Museum and Cascadia Research Collective, NOAA Permit #24359

Around the Sound: Juvenile humpback whale ‘stronger and energetic’ after recent rescue

A juvenile humpback whale entangled in more than 200 feet of rope and then freed earlier this month has been spotted off Galiano Island in British Columbia, prompting cautious relief among biologists who are monitoring the whale’s recovery. The whale, named Starry Knight, was seen by whale watchers last Friday, and was breaching and appeared […]

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July 17, 2025

Annual orca count grows by one, as the Puget Sound whales stay on the hunt for food

Although an official census report is not due until October, it appears that the population of our southern resident killer whales has increased by one over the past year. That slight increase is the net result of four births and three deaths, according to the Center for Whale Research, which is responsible for the annual […]

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July 7, 2025

A photographic tour of the entire Puget Sound shoreline by watercraft and aircraft

Kayaker-scientist Brian Footen is back on the waters of Puget Sound this summer, paddling through inlets and circling islands on a 2,700-mile journey to photograph the shoreline and document natural and human-caused changes to the habitat. This state-funded project is Brian’s second photographic trip along the sinuous shoreline throughout the entirety of the Sound, from […]

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June 23, 2025

The debate over oxygen in Puget Sound

A draft nutrient reduction plan from the Washington Department of Ecology is out for public review. Now, many new developments — technical, scientific and legal — are reaching a critical stage and setting up a framework to make some major decisions. This four-part series in Our Water Ways looks back on how we have reached our present condition, including a consideration of possible solutions.

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June 9, 2025

Sea lions resting on docks at a marina with sailboats and yachts in the background under a cloudy sky.

Follow the herring: Why sea lions have been calling Shilshole Marina home

For the past three springs, Shilshole Bay Marina has been contending with droves of California visitors occupying their guest boater moorages––California sea lions that is. To Shelby Allman, Port of Seattle Harbor Operations Supervisor, it seemed like the furry visitors arrived almost overnight. By mid-May nearly 120 animals had hauled themselves onto five “finger” docks […]

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April 29, 2025

New law requires sewage spills to be revealed to the public through a new statewide website

Mindy Roberts of Washington Conservation Action said someone asked her a few years ago about the frequent sewage spills occurring in Tacoma’s Thea Foss Waterway. “My answer was, ‘What sewage spills?’” Mindy recalled, quickly realizing that if she didn’t know about sewage spills in her own city, then hardly anybody else was likely to know […]

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April 15, 2025

The winner of Grand Uncertainties Madness!

After five rounds of voting, the winner of the Grand Uncertainties Madness tournament bracket is: What type of protection and restoration actions have the largest and most lasting impact on floodplain function and which types of actions are cost effective? This research need (from the rivers group) won in a close but decisive victory over […]

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April 10, 2025

Research and whale watching enhanced with artificial intelligence to identify individual orcas

When out on Puget Sound with killer whale experts, I’m often impressed by how quickly such folks can identify individual whales by name or number, even when a group of orcas is swimming a fair distance away. I can’t begin to do that, because I have never studied the catalogs of dorsal fins and markings […]

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