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September 25, 2023

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Warm ocean waters work their way into Puget Sound

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 […]

March 29, 2023

Adult breeding rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata). Photo: Frostnip (CC BY-NC 2.0)">

A tale of two islands

By Eric Wagner Science is hard, but coming up with a title for a scientific paper is harder. Exhibit A: the paper some colleagues and I recently published in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Originally I wanted to call it, “A Tale of Two Islands: Disparate Responses to a Marine Heatwave at Two Pacific Seabird Colonies.” […]

February 28, 2023

Image of San Juan Islands from the Salish Sea Model">

Findings and reports: February 2023

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 […]

December 14, 2022

Tacoma Narrows Bridge viewed from Gig Harbor side https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomcollinsphoto/47070840014/in/photostream/">

A network of computer models is predicting the future of Puget Sound

A new $4.8 million dollar project led by the Puget Sound Institute links together a series of computer models to explore future scenarios across the watershed. Some of Puget Sound’s biggest concerns hold the greatest uncertainties.  Will we have clean water? Can the ecosystem sustain species like endangered salmon? How can the region continue to […]

January 21, 2022

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Scientists look for answers in methane bubbles rising from bottom of Puget Sound

In 2011, sonar operators aboard the ocean-going Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson inadvertently recorded a surprising natural phenomenon, as the 274-foot ship traversed through Puget Sound while returning to port at the University of Washington. At the time, researchers on board were focused on a host of other projects. They might not have known that […]

September 16, 2021

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Plunging into a jungle of weather statistics to find the footprints of climate change

“Augusts in Seattle are getting hotter, leading to a change of 3.5°F since 1970.” This was the sentence that caught my eye while reading an email from Peter Gerard, director of communications for Climate Central, an organization that prides itself on helping news reporters tell an accurate story of climate change. I wondered immediately: Is […]

July 13, 2021

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Can biologists estimate the massive loss of shellfish caused by low tides, high temps?

The putrid smell of rotting shellfish on some beaches in Puget Sound and elsewhere along the West Coast were a clear sign that large numbers of clams, mussels, oysters and other intertidal creatures were killed from exposure to extreme low tides, record-breaking temperatures and a blazing hot sun. The total losses of shellfish that perished […]

September 3, 2020

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A look at future ocean conditions and how they could affect coastal communities

Scientists tell us that climate change is probably increasing the frequency of extreme events, such as hurricanes, droughts and wildfires. As time goes on, we might expect even more dramatic shifts in the ecosystem, as some species move to more suitable locations and others die out. The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing along […]