More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound — their habitat and the second largest estuary in the mainland U.S. — warmed significantly.

The , published the week of Jan. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the world’s largest and longest dataset of wildlife parasite abundance. It suggests that parasites may be especially vulnerable to a changing climate.

“People generally think that climate change will cause parasites to thrive, that we will see an increase in parasite outbreaks as the world warms,” said lead author , a UW associate professor of aquatic and fishery sciences. “For some parasite species that may be true, but parasites depend on hosts, and that makes them particularly vulnerable in a changing world where the fate of hosts is being reshuffled.”

While some parasites have a single host species, many parasites travel between host species. Eggs are carried in one host species, the larvae emerge and infect another host and the adult may reach maturity in a third host before laying eggs.

For parasites that rely on three or more host species during their lifecycle — including more than half the parasite species identified in the study’s Puget Sound fish — analysis of historic fish specimens showed an 11% average decline per decade in abundance. Of 10 parasite species that had disappeared completely by 1980, nine relied on three or more hosts.

“Our results show that parasites with one or two host species stayed pretty steady, but parasites with three or more hosts crashed,” Wood said. “The degree of decline was severe. It would trigger conservation action if it occurred in the types of species that people care about, like mammals or birds.”

And while parasites inspire fear or disgust — especially for people who associate them with illness in themselves, their kids or their pets — the result is worrying news for ecosystems, Wood said.

“Parasite ecology is really in its infancy, but what we do know is that these complex-lifecycle parasites probably play an important role in pushing energy through food webs and in supporting top apex predators,” Wood said. She is one of the authors of a 2020 report laying out a conservation plan for parasites.

Wood’s study is among the first to use a new method for resurrecting information on parasite populations of the past. Mammals and birds are preserved with taxidermy, which retains parasites only on skin, feathers or fur. But fish, reptile and amphibian specimens are preserved in fluid, which also preserves any parasites living inside the animal at the time of its death.

The study focused on eight species of fish that are common in the behind-the-scenes collections of natural history museums. Most came from the UW Fish Collection at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The authors carefully sliced into the preserved fish specimens and then identified and counted the parasites they discovered inside before returning the specimens to the museums.

“It took a long time. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart,” Wood said. “I’d love to stick these fish in a blender and use a genomic technique to detect their parasites’ DNA, but the fish were first preserved with a fluid that shreds DNA. So what we did was just regular old shoe-leather parasitology.”

Among the multi-celled parasites they found were , or animals with an exoskeleton, including crustaceans, as well as what Wood describes as “unbelievably gorgeous tapeworms:” the , whose heads are armed with hook-covered tentacles. In total, the team counted 17,259 parasites, of 85 types, from 699 fish specimens.

To explain the parasite declines, the authors considered three possible causes: how abundant the host species was in Puget Sound; pollution levels; and temperature at the ocean’s surface. The variable that best explained the decline in parasites was sea surface temperature, which rose by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Puget Sound from 1950 to 2019.

A parasite that requires multiple hosts is like a delicate , Wood said. The complex series of steps they face to complete their lifecycle makes them vulnerable to disruption at any point along the way.

“This study demonstrates that major parasite declines have happened in Puget Sound. If this can happen unnoticed in an ecosystem as well studied as this one, where else might it be happening?” Wood said. “I hope our work inspires other ecologists to think about their own focal ecosystems, identify the right museum specimens, and see whether these trends are unique to Puget Sound, or something that is occurring in other places as well.

“Our result draws attention to the fact that parasitic species might be in real danger,” Wood added. “And that could mean bad stuff for us — not just fewer worms, but less of the parasite-driven ecosystem services that we’ve come to depend on.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the UW-based Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and the Washington Research Foundation.

Co-authors are at Pennsylvania’s Neumann University, who did this work as a UW postdoctoral researcher; at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University, who did this work as a UW postdoctoral researcher; , a UW Research Technologist; , a UW doctoral student; , manager of the UW Fish Collection at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture; and , faculty members in aquatic and fishery sciences at the UW; at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center; and at HelmWest Laboratory in Missoula, Montana.

For more information, contact Wood, who is currently in California, at chelwood@uw.edu. Accompanying images and b-roll video available .

Grants: NSF: 2141898

Swarms of jellies have been seen more frequently in Puget Sound over the past several decades, and some biologists speculate these fast-growing jellyfish will do especially well in the warmer oceans of the future.

Moon jellies, or Aurelia labiata, are unique among the various jellyfish species inhabiting Puget Sound in that they form vast blooms. When populations spike, they can take over a single bay — creating a dramatic sight.

����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý-led research suggests moon jellies are feasting on zooplankton, the various tiny animals that drift with the currents, in the bays they inhabit. This could affect other hungry marine life, like juvenile salmon or herring — especially if predictions are correct and climate change will favor fast-growing jellyfish.

The team, which included researchers at Highline College, Western Washington University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this work March 2 as a poster at the Ocean Sciences Meeting.

“These aggregations can contain thousands to millions of individuals, and they can cover a broad range of space,” said lead author , a UW graduate student in oceanography. “It’s kind of really amazing to see these aggregations when you run into them, oftentimes in protected bays.”

Team member Correigh Greene at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center has for more than a decade. Many species are becoming more common, he’s found, thriving in the warmer water seen in 2015 and expected in the future.

“Why are the jellyfish increasing? And if the moon jellies are increasing, what are their impacts on the ecosystem in Puget Sound?,” said , a UW professor of oceanography.

Through field sampling and lab experiments, the new study suggests that population blooms of moon jellies could have significant local effects on the base of the marine food web.

The team took water samples from Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island and Sinclair Inlet, south of Bremerton, during moon jelly population spikes late each summer of 2019, 2020 and 2021. In collaboration with the Squaxin Tribe, they also sampled water at two South Puget Sound hotspots for moon jellies: Budd and Eld inlets.

Water samples taken during moon jelly population spikes in Quartermaster Harbor and Sinclair Inlet during the last three summers showed that levels of zooplankton — especially — were dramatically lower inside the moon jelly aggregations. The average copepod densities were as much as 73% lower within aggregations than in other parts of the bay.

“This strongly suggests to us that the moon jellies are feeding on the copepods inside the aggregations, depleting their populations,” Schultz said.

The team also conducted an experiment at Highline College’s MAST Center in the summers of 2019 and 2020. They placed different numbers of moon jellies in 10 large tanks filled with local seawater and zooplankton. When researchers measured the zooplankton levels two hours later, the copepod levels had dropped by as much as 75% in the tank containing the most moon jellies.

“When we pair those two results, we get an idea that the jellyfish in Puget Sound are able to eat a lot of copepods, and that they might be altering the zooplankton population in these embayments,” Keister said. “We don’t have any rates yet for the field, but from what we observed in the experiments, the moon jellies are clearly preying on those copepods at a very fast rate.”

The researchers are still analyzing their data. Eventually they hope to establish the moon jellies’ feeding rates and incorporate that into an ecosystem model of Puget Sound that predicts how various populations will fare depending on the environmental conditions.

This research was funded by Washington Sea Grant. Other members of the team are Kathryn Sobocinski at Western Washington University and Rus Higley at Highline College.

For more information, contact Schultz at schulh2@uw.edu or Keister at jkeister@uw.edu.

The columns of bubbles are especially pronounced off Alki Point in West Seattle and near the ferry terminal in Kingston, Washington, according to a in the January issue of Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

“There’s methane plumes all over Puget Sound,” said lead author , a UW professor of oceanography. “Single plumes are all over the place, but the big clusters of plumes are at Kingston and at Alki Point.”

Previous UW research had found methane bubbling up from the outer coasts of Washington and Oregon. The bubbles in Puget Sound were first discovered by surprise in 2011, when the UW’s global research vessel, the RV Thomas G. Thompson, had kept its sonar beams turned on as it returned to its home port on the UW campus. The underwater images created by the soundwaves showed a distinct, persistent bubble plumes as the vessel rounded the Kingston ferry terminal.

Since then, the team analyzed sonar data collected during 18 cruises on the UW’s smaller research vessel, the RV Rachel Carson. Methane plumes were seen from Hood Canal to offshore of Everett to south of the Tacoma Narrows. At Alki, the bubbles rise 200 meters, about the height of the Space Needle, to reach the ocean’s surface.

“Off Alki, every 3 feet or so there’s a crisp, sharp hole in the seafloor that’s 3-5 inches in diameter,” Johnson said. “There are holes all over the place, but there aren’t bubbles or fluid coming out of all of them. There’s occasionally a burst of bubbles, and then another one 50 feet away that has a new burst of bubbles.”

This research video shows bubbles emerging from the seafloor about 200 meters (650 feet) deep. It was recorded Oct. 25, 2020, about 1 mile offshore from Seattle’s Alki Point. Credit: Paul Johnson/����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý

The study is an early step toward exploring the release of methane from estuaries, or places where saltwater and freshwater meet, a subject more widely studied in Europe. Though only a small amount of natural methane is released compared to human sources, understanding how the greenhouse gas cycles through ecosystems becomes increasingly important with climate change.

“In order to understand methane in the atmosphere and control the human sources, we have to know the natural sources,” Johnson said.

The two persistent fields of bubble plumes occur above geologic faults: for the Alki bubbles, located above a branch of the Seattle Fault, and for the Kingston bubbles, above the South Whidbey Fault. It’s likely that the bubbles are connected to the underlying geology, Johnson said.

Questions remain about the bubbles’ origins. One initial hypothesis, that the bubbles might be coming from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, was not supported by preliminary data. The gas bubbles don’t show the same distinctive chemistry as nearby hot springs and deep wells that connect to this geologic feature deep underground.

Humans also don’t seem responsible. Puget Sound has in the past been a dumping ground for waste or sediment, but vigorous tides sweep that material out into the open ocean, Johnson said. Sewer outflows, gas lines and freshwater storm drains also don’t match the plumes’ locations.

Instead, a biological source of methane beneath the seafloor seems likely, Johnson said. The source may be in the dense clay sediment deposited after the last Ice Age, when glaciers first carved out the Puget Sound basin. The methane seems to be biological in origin, and the bubbles also support methane-eating bacterial mats in the surrounding water.

Jerry (Junzhe) Liu, a senior in oceanography, helped to analyze the data and participated in a 2019 cruise that contributed data.

“I’m interested in two seemingly parallel fields: fault zones and air-sea interactions for climate,” Liu said. “This project covers all the way from below the seafloor to above the ocean’s surface.”

In follow-up work, scientists used underwater microphones this fall to eavesdrop on the bubbles. , an associate professor at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý Bothell, is analyzing the sound that bubbles make when they are emitted. The team also hopes to go back to Alki Point with a remotely operated vehicle that could place instruments inside a vent hole to fully analyze the emerging fluid and gas.

Co-authors of the paper are , an engineer in UW oceanography; Chenyu (Fiona) Wang, a former UW undergraduate; , a UW associate professor of oceanography; , a UW affiliate assistant professor of oceanography and researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Susan Merle and Sharon Walker at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Tamara Baumberger at Oregon State University. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Johnson at paulj@uw.edu.

A new ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý computer model can predict conditions in Puget Sound and off the coast of Washington three days into the future. , completed this past summer, uses marine currents, river discharges and weather above the water to create the forecasts.

“It’s like a weather forecast of the ocean in our region,” said lead developer , a UW professor of oceanography. The project is the culmination of about 15 years of work. “It started off small, modeling parts of Puget Sound, and went to modeling the Columbia River and the coastal ocean nearby, to modeling the whole region. We’re making the model bigger and more realistic all the time.”

Unlike existing marine forecasts that tell boaters the wind and waves out on the water, this model drops below the water’s surface to predict water temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, pH, chlorophyll — a sign of biological productivity — and aragonite saturation, the most important factor in shell formation, from the surface down to the seafloor.

The simulations are updated daily on the UW’s Hyak supercomputer with a resolution of 500 meters (about a third of a mile) throughout Puget Sound, and slightly more for the outer coast, from southern Oregon to near the tip of Vancouver Island. The model incorporates 45 river flows, uses a UW weather forecast for wind, rain and sunlight, and compares its predictions against dozens of marine testing sites.

LiveOcean was originally developed to predict the impacts of more acidic seawater on the local shellfish industry, and has support from the state-funded as a tool for local shellfish growers. This will be the first spring that the tool is available for their use.

“If growers buy seed from a hatchery, when’s a good time to put those out in the water?” MacCready said. “Is there predicted to be a very corrosive ocean acidification event? If so, they should hold off until the water becomes less acidified.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also funds the project. It uses the forecast in combination with human analysis to produce the joint UW-NOAA bulletin on , or “red tides,” that it shares with coastal managers.

The Puget Sound forecasts have other applications. , a UW graduate student in oceanography, has used LiveOcean to predict where invasive larvae might travel next, enabling Washington Sea Grant to pinpoint its green crab eradication efforts. The model can predict the three-day drift path for any object — spilled oil, wastewater overflow, trash or even an old-fashioned message in a bottle — released from a given point in Puget Sound.

The LiveOcean forecasts are now available on the UW-based website. To access the forecasts, click “Layers” at the top left, find “Models” and then scroll down to “LiveOcean” to view maps for temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, phytoplankton, pH as well as aragonite saturation. (Click the scale bar to make it bigger.)

LiveOcean is among a handful of seawater forecasts being developed for the Pacific Northwest. The app, from Oregon State University, covers Oregon and Washington coasts. The from the University of British Columbia focuses on the Salish Sea, and the from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory simulates the region’s water but does not issue forecasts.

MacCready compares the situation with global climate models, where models with different specialties give a better overall understanding of the system.

While the daily LiveOcean forecast is useful for making decisions today, the tool also has accumulated several years of historical simulations that allow people to analyze past events, like the unusually warm conditions off the Pacific Northwest coast that peaked in 2015.

“We know that our model is able to reproduce ‘,’ and that it shows up really nicely,” MacCready said. “This new version will allow a much better exploration of what that event looked like inside the Salish Sea.”

LiveOcean builds on decades of experience with Puget Sound’s complex geography and intricate coastlines. In addition to helping managers, it’s intended to act as a teaching tool. MacCready has created documents on in Puget Sound, the long-term in Puget Sound and has written an accompanying on where Puget Sound’s water comes from.

“The big thing I try to explain to people is that we have this dragging deep, saline water into the Salish Sea, where it mixes with the freshwater and then flows out,” MacCready said. “That flow is 20 times bigger than all our rivers combined, and it brings in 95 percent of our nutrients. It’s really the biggest river in Puget Sound, but it’s actually coming uphill, from the deep ocean.”

As spring arrives in Puget Sound, the rains will let up, snow will melt and the rivers will begin to rise. Winds along the coast will soon reverse direction, which draws more nutrient-rich flow from the deep ocean. And residents of the Sound will be getting out on the water for activities of all kinds.

“Now that this makes daily forecasts and performs pretty well, I think it could be used for a lot more applications,” MacCready said. “I’d be delighted to hear from people with ideas.”

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For more information, contact MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu.

The Puget Sound watershed — the area west of the Cascades Mountains that stretches from the state capitol up to the Canadian border — is warming. It also faces rising seas, heavier downpours, larger and more frequent floods, more sediment in its rivers, less snow, and hotter, drier summer streams.

A new by the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý synthesizes all the relevant research about the future of the Puget Sound region to paint a picture of what to expect in the coming decades, and how best to prepare for that future.

“When you look at the projected changes, it’s dramatic,” said lead author , a research scientist at the UW . “This report provides a single resource for people to look at what’s coming and think about how to adapt.”

Ten UW authors contributed to the report, which draws on published papers, agency studies and regional adaptation efforts now taking place. This first major update since 2005 includes new topics such as sediment transport and landslides, more details on salmon impacts, ocean acidification and flooding, and more specifics about how different parts of the region will change.

The report looks at all 12 major river systems that drain into Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, summarizing projected changes that affect humans and ecosystems. The report is aimed at policymakers, resource managers and the general public.

Projected changes include:

• Average air temperatures in Puget Sound will rise by between 2.9 and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2050s, for the most optimistic scenario of future greenhouse gas emissions
• Ocean levels will rise by 4 to 56 inches by 2100, with the latest predictions offering more specifics on geographic variability and the effects of storm surges
• Winter flooding will increase due to rising oceans, more winter precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, and more frequent and intense heavy rains
• Landslide prediction requires more research, but more rain in the winter and more extreme heavy rain events are expected to increase the overall risk of landslides
• Rivers are projected to carry more sediment downstream, as glaciers recede and expose loose material, and higher river flows and more intense rainfall will likely act to increase erosion. For example, sediment in the Skagit River is projected to more than double by the end of this century.
• Peak river flows are projected to rise the most in places such as the Snohomish River that have a lot of area around the snowline, where warming will cause precipitation to shift from snow to rain
• Warmer air, less meltwater and lower summer flows will combine to raise river temperatures in the summer, making many waterways less hospitable for salmon
• Heat waves are expected to become more frequent. While smaller than the changes projected for Eastern Washington, shows a bigger public-health risk west of the Cascades, where people are less prepared for the heat
• Agriculture west of the Cascades is very diverse, and the effects of climate change on this region are understudied
• Warmer oceans will likely favor more frequent toxic algae blooms
• Increasing acidity of seawater will affect the shellfish industry, and may increase the toxicity of some algal blooms. Impacts on other marine life are not yet fully known.

The report also looks at how the community is beginning to respond. It cites two recent studies on how increased river flows will alter flood risks, one for the lower , from Monroe to the Sound, and the other for the lower Skagit River, from Mount Vernon to the Sound.

“It’s taking that next step, from numbers that give you an idea of what might happen, to numbers that give you the specific information that’s needed to plan for climate change,” Mauger said.

The report also includes examples of community adaptation, both in planning and in practice. In 2007, King County combined all its districts so the region could more effectively prepare for a future with increased flooding. As another example, the city of Anacortes considered both rising seas and heavier river sediment in designing its new that opened in 2013.

“In the same way that the science is very different from the , in 2005, I think the capacity and willingness to work on climate change is in a completely different place,” Mauger said.

The work was funded by the at UW Tacoma, which is supported by the Puget Sound Partnership and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other partners are the Washington Department of Ecology and The Nature Conservancy.

Co-authors are , , , , , , , , and , all at the UW.

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For more information, contact Mauger at 206-685-0317 or gmauger@uw.edu.

Other media contacts:

• Puget Sound Institute: (director) at 253-254-7025 or jebaker@uw.edu and (media contact) at jeffrice@uw.edu or 253-254-7030 x8008
• Puget Sound Partnership: Alicia Lawver (communications) at 360-464-2011 alicia.lawver@psp.wa.gov
• The Nature Conservancy: Julie Morse (collaborator) at jmorse@tnc.org or Robin Stanton (media contact) at 206-436-6274 or rstanton@tnc.org
• Washington Dept. of Ecology: Camille St. Onge, climate communications manager, 360-407-6932 or cast461@ecy.wa.gov
• NOAA: Michael Milstein, NOAA Fisheries communications, at 503-231-6268 or Michael.Milstein@noaa.gov

A new resource published this week explores these questions and many more in the , published by the at UW Tacoma. The online publication brings together stray “who knew?” tidbits, interesting factoids and maps as well as major study results and published data to offer a condensed, robust picture of what’s at play in Puget Sound.

The resource is intended for decision and policy makers, journalists, educators and the general public.

“There are a lot of elements that go into understanding Puget Sound,” said Jeff Rice, managing editor at the institute and editor of the new publication. “The fact book really represents an overview of what we know about this place and what we can offer to people who are interested in the subject.”

The , one of the book’s funders along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, tasked the institute with creating a resource to help the agency’s communication efforts about Puget Sound. Rice and others then asked more than two dozen local scientists and writers a weighty question: What do we really need to know about Puget Sound and related recovery efforts?

The 124-page fact book presents answers to that question, laid out in a series of easy-to-read essays on broad topics such as species of birds, fish, marine mammals and shellfish; nearshore and open-water food webs; human influences on the Sound; and climate change. Specific subtopics range from stormwater effects on salmon, sea-level rise, key local industries, annual rainfall, threatened bird species, killer whales that live in Puget Sound and various strategies to protect and restore the waterway. Experts, many from the UW, served as writers and editors of each essay.

The report focuses on the state-defined boundaries of Puget Sound, but acknowledges the broader Salish Sea region, which extends across the U.S.-Canada border and reflects the entire cross-border ecosystem.

A section on climate change offers an overview of how conditions such as flooding and snowpack, harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification and sea-level rise will likely alter the landscape in coming years. It previews a new synthesis report to be released in coming weeks describing the state of the Puget Sound region under climate change.

The fact book will live on the Puget Sound Institute’s website, which began a few years ago as an updatable resource for the region. The institute’s editorial board intends to update sections of the new fact book as needed and perhaps will release a new edition each year.

UW contributors include researchers from the School of Oceanography, the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, Climate Impacts Group, Puget Sound Institute and Washington Sea Grant.

Researchers have installed a on the hull of the 64-car ferry that crosses Admiralty Inlet. The sensor measures the direction and speed of the water from surface to seafloor across the entire channel.

Understanding how water flows through Puget Sound’s myriad channels will help to better understand the local marine environment.

“Admiralty Inlet is the gateway between the ocean and Puget Sound,”said , an oceanographer with the UW . “We are measuring the flow through that gateway.”

Thomson is especially interested in tracking intermittent tongues that bring low-oxygen water up from the deep ocean. Lack of oxygen has led to in Hood Canal, and people want to know whether regulating sewage systems or runoff could prevent the problem.

“Under certain conditions deep water from the ocean will come up and sneak into Puget Sound and possibly contribute to low oxygen levels. Right now there is limited data, so it’s hard to say when or how much this happens,” Thomson said. “We really are an urban water system, but there’s also this very natural process connected to the ocean that changes our water quality.”

Thomson has worked for the Department of Ecology and others to study Admiralty Inlet for . His team maintained a seafloor sensor for over four years to measure currents and oxygen levels in the fast-flowing waters. But that one sensor could only see a small sliver, not the whole picture.

“Monitoring of Puget Sound is important because it helps us understand long-term trends and changes over time,” said , a marine scientist at the state . “Monitoring helps us understand if changes are natural or human-caused. If changes are human-caused, perhaps there are steps we can take to reverse problems.”

The sensor on the ferry is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. It sends tiny sound waves, or pings, down through the water. The technology is very similar to the depth-sounders and fish-finders used on many recreational vessels.

Particles in the water reflect the sound back. The time it takes for the echoes to return to the profiler is used to calculate the distance beneath the ship, and the shift in the wavelength of the returning ping is used to calculate the water’s direction and speed.

The ferry data will be equivalent to placing 32 sensors across the 3 ½-mile (6 km) stretch of water, Thomson said, and will be able to track flow at every 3 feet of depth through the channel.

Tracking flow across the entire stretch can help better understand and predict the ocean’s influence on Puget Sound oxygen, acidity and nutrient levels, and the movement of pollution or natural substances with ocean currents.

“This is an example of a creative and cost-effective collaboration helping us better understand the complex marine ecosystem of Puget Sound,” said Ken Dzinbal of the , which is a partner on the project.

UW researchers modified the instrument to automatically begin recording data once the ferry starts to move and begin to upload the data wirelessly to computer servers on land as the vessel approaches shore. They worked with ferry engineers this spring to install the sensor and check the accuracy of the data.

They’ll install a second system later this year on the , which travels the same route.

Observations are available to the public now from the Department of Ecology and on the UW Applied Physics Lab , and in a few weeks will be available in more graphical form. In about a year there should be enough data for a student to start looking for trends, said Thomson, who is also a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

This project is just the latest in a local tradition of using ferries for science. The is a partnership between the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Washington State Ferries that provides up-to-date marine forecasts. And since 2009 the Department of Ecology has put on the private Victoria Clipper IV passenger ferry that travels between Seattle and Victoria.

Funding for the project is from the U.S. .

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For more information, contact Thomson at 206-616-0858 or jthomson@apl.washington.edu. He will be in Port Townsend conducting research in Admiralty Inlet from June 16 to 20 but will be available via email or phone.

Adapted from an by the Washington Department of Ecology.

����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý oceanographers made the first detailed measurements at the headwater’s source, a submarine canyon offshore from the strait that separates the U.S. and Canada. Observations show water surging up through the canyon and mixing at surprisingly high rates, according to a published in March in .

“This is the headwaters of Puget Sound,” said co-author , a UW professor of oceanography. “That’s why it’s so salty in Puget Sound, that’s why the water is pretty clean and that’s why there’s high productivity in Puget Sound, because you’re constantly pulling in this deep water.”

It has been known for decades that 20 to 30 times more deep water flows into Puget Sound than from all the rivers combined. Surface tides, while dramatic, play a minor role.

“The tidal currents that slosh the water back and forth, that’s what’s really obvious,” MacCready said. “But there’s also a slow, persistent circulation that is constantly bringing deep water in, mixing it up and sending the surface water out.”

New measurements show this canyon potentially supplies most of the water coming into Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Canada’s Georgia Strait.

The intense flow and mixing measured inside the canyon could help explain the mysterious productivity of Northwest shores. Coastal winds usually bring nutrients up on the west coast, but the numbers don’t add up for this region.

“Washington is several times more productive – has more phytoplankton – than Oregon or California, and yet the winds here are several times weaker. That’s been kind of a puzzle, for years,” said co-author , an oceanographer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The secret to the Northwest’s outsize productivity could be marine canyons, an idea first suggested by UW oceanographer . The northern section of the west coast has many more canyons than Oregon or California, with 11 along the Washington coast.

The new paper provides the latest evidence for these canyons’ importance. Measurements by another UW oceanographer in the 1970s first showed water flowing through Juan de Fuca Canyon with a direction that depends on the coastal winds. More recently, calculations by Hickey and a colleague in 2008 submarine canyons could play an important role in supplying nutrients to the Northwest coastal waters.

Alford and MacCready measured inside the Juan de Fuca Canyon in April 2013 using an , built at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory with funding from Washington Sea Grant, that takes water measurements near the seafloor. During a day and a half of round-the-clock observations they got lucky with the wind direction and recorded strong flow up through the canyon.

Water flowed as fast as 1.3 feet per second at 500 feet below the surface, and showed mixing up to 1,000 times the normal rate for the deep ocean. The data also showed that the flow is hydraulically-controlled, meaning it flows smoothly over a shallow ridge just off the cape and then forms a turbulent breaking wave on the other side, mixing with the waters far above.

The deep water forced up through the canyon is rich in nutrients that support the growth of marine plants which then feed other marine life. Those waters also are more acidic and lower in oxygen, all of which contribute to water conditions in the Sound.

“The location of this sill would be an outstanding place to fish,” Alford said. “People fish in Juan de Fuca Canyon pretty actively, and that’s probably no coincidence.”

Pinpointing the source of Puget Sound waters will help make better computer models of circulation through the region, and eventually could help forecast ocean acidity, harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen events.

“Canyons might be important not just for coastal productivity, but that mixed water also gets exported into the interior of the ocean,” Alford said. “I look at this as a first step in getting canyons right in coastal models and in global climate models, because I think it could potentially be a very important source of mixing.”

The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ship time aboard the Thomas G. Thompson was provided by the UW.

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For more information, contact Alford at malford@apl.washington.edu or 206-221-3257 and MacCready at pmacc@uw.edu or 206-685-9588.

Spearheaded by the UW-based , the is meant to be a synthesis of the best available information for Puget Sound recovery from experts with state and federal agencies, academic institutions, tribes and organizations. A key starting point for the project, for example, was to incorporate the latest from the , a state agency and encyclopedia partner.

Organizers of the online-only encyclopedia want to create a network of researchers and students to provide content that regional scientists will review to ensure it is current and authoritative, according to UW’s , managing editor.

“We call what we’re trying to do curated crowdsourcing,” he said.

Organizers will officially launch the site, which has been online in a test version since May, with a panel discussion on new tools for networked science, the key to building something like the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, Rice said. The , which is free and open to everyone, starts at 3:30 p.m. at the UW .

The panel discussion will be from 4 to 5 p.m., with Mary Ruckelshaus of the Natural Capital Project, Michael Pidwirny with the Encyclopedia of Earth, Tracy Barbaro with the Encyclopedia of Life and UW’s Jennifer Davison representing ScienceOnlineSeattle. The dean of the College of the Environment, , will moderate. A reception follows.

What makes the encyclopedia different from other databases and collections, Rice said, is its focus on the waters of the Salish Sea – Puget Sound and the straits of Georgia, Haro and Juan de Fuca – as well as the surrounding watersheds. The encyclopedia, for example, offers a of 6,000 plant and animal species that organizers anticipate will eventually include information about how each is faring in the Puget Sound region. Other places also offer species lists but they are generally broader and not specific to the Salish Sea, he said.

The encyclopedia has information from a wide variety of sources including scientific papers, official reports, maps and items by contributors. An on the northern red-legged frog, for instance, was researched and written by a UW student volunteer and edited by Rice.

“The encyclopedia is designed by Puget Sound scientists to benefit our community by being a fun – yet authoritative – ever-expanding resource,” said , UW Tacoma professor with the .

Members of a just-recruited editorial board plan to reach out to researchers in their disciplines to contribute content. In turn researchers are getting a tool they can use for such things as grant writing, to highlight their latest findings without having to create their own websites and as another way to show broader impacts from research.

The encyclopedia is one project under the , which Baker heads, that was created in 2011 with a $4 million, three-year from the EPA. The institute brings together scientists, engineers and policy makers working on the restoration and protection of Puget Sound and provide expert advice based on the best-available science, he said.

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For more information:
Baker, 253-254-7025, jebaker@u.washington.edu
Rice, 253-254-7030 Ext. 8008, jeffrice@uw.edu

While the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was running a six-part series on problems plaguing Puget Sound, UW undergraduates, graduate students and faculty were at work on board the UW’s 274-foot research vessel gathering information needed to help puzzle out some of the sound’s most pressing problems.

Work during expeditions on the Thomas G. Thompson last month included tracking low-oxygen water from the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Hood Canal, where oxygen-deprived water is a concern when it kills fish. Another expedition sampled other sites in Puget Sound where shellfish beds have had to be closed in past years because of toxic phytoplankton blooms or bacterial outbreaks, a human health concern.

The UW is the only U.S. university that uses a ship as large and sophisticated as the Thompson for student education, according to Rick Keil, an associate professor of oceanography whose undergraduate class developed its own science plans and then executed them during a four-day expedition to learn more about low-oxygen waters of Hood Canal.

“Nobody has done a transect like this during 2006 that extends from the Pacific into Hood Canal and, in fact, nobody I know of has done one in the fall, so the class had a pretty unique opportunity to explore how the ocean connects to Hood Canal,” Keil says.

“We wanted to compare water on the outer coast, in the strait and in Hood Canal looking at phytoplankton, zooplankton, dissolved oxygen and species richness so we might quantify what’s going on,” says Chantell Wetzel, a senior majoring in aquatic and fishery sciences. The 20 students in Ocean 442 were divided into three groups. Wetzel’s group, for example, was concerned with benthic biology, the species found in the sediments.

Another student, Wendy Guo, a senior in oceanography, described work leading up to the expedition saying: “We got possible research topics and a basic outline of ship capabilities and we went to work on our own cruise plans. We had to decide the best ways to get the data we wanted.” Classmates then reviewed each group’s plan and Keil gave advice on what was feasible.

Their initial findings point to a system that isn’t rebooting itself by flushing.

“There didn’t appear to be a lot of deep ocean water going into Hood Canal,” Guo said.

Hood Canal is stagnating again, as it does every year, Keil says. “The coastal upwelling that fueled the inputs of new ocean water into the canal is finished for the year. Because of the way water is mixing in the eastern straits and in Admiralty Inlet, it is preventing any new deep water from getting into Hood Canal.”

“It also looks as if there is a small bloom of phytoplankton in Hood Canal that is growing in the low-oxygen water that was upwelled and killed the fish a month or so ago. Since phytoplankton aren’t sensitive to low oxygen, but are limited by nutrients, the upwelling that killed the fish was a boon for the phytoplankton. They are growing, assimilating nutrients, dying and sinking in the canal faster than the water is being flushed out. What this means is that they are acting as a nutrient-concentrating mechanism, which means that the canal is keeping its nutrient load and, thus, exacerbating the problem.”

Check the class Web site at http://courses.washington.edu/pugetoce/ for photos and video from the expedition and at the end of the quarter for the groups’ papers about their findings.

The situation in Hood Canal can cause deadly conditions for fish while other spots around the sound have posed dangers for humans in recent years. Algal blooms in Puget Sound are increasingly producing domoic acid, which can sicken and — in high enough doses — kill humans, other mammals and birds when they eat fish or shellfish contaminated with the toxin.

Since the 1991 discovery of domoic acid along the Washington coast, samples of shellfish have regularly been collected and analyzed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribal nations and Washington Department of Health. When levels are too high, beaches are closed to harvesting. The closure of commercial shellfish beds near Port Townsend in fall 2003 was the first domoic acid-based closure on Puget Sound

Understanding these toxic blooms is the focus of the Pacific Northwest Center for Human Health and Ocean Sciences, a national research center based at the UW, and of another expedition last month on the Thompson.

Human-health concerns did not prompt closure of any areas in Puget Sound this year, giving researchers a chance to look at the characteristics of water at sites where there have previously been problems, says Gabrielle Rocap, an assistant professor of oceanography and chief scientist for the cruise Oct. 12-15. The researchers did extensive sampling, she says, visiting sites in the main basin of Puget Sound, Port Madison, around Vashon Island, Hood Canal, Strait of Juan de Fuca, Discovery Bay, Whidbey basin and Penn Cove.

According to preliminary analysis done on the ship during the expedition, the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia, which is harmless unless it is producing domoic acid at dangerous levels, was found at highest concentrations in water samples from the Whidbey Basin according to Micaela Parker, a research scientist with oceanography. It was found in much lower concentrations closer to the shore in that area.

Where the diatoms are concentrated and where they are carried are among the things researchers are trying to discover as they investigate the environmental conditions that trigger blooms of harmful algae. How the blooms affect public health, for instance determining what populations are at greatest risk, was another area of concern for the researchers who were on board the Thompson.

During the expedition, some time each day was devoted to working meetings between the oceanographers and public health researchers to share research discoveries and discuss plans for a new course in the field of oceans and human health. The Pacific Northwest Center for Human Health and Ocean Sciences, co-directed by Elaine Faustman, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, and Ginger Armbrust, professor of oceanography, is in the midst of a seminar series this fall (see details at ) and hopes to offer a course in the fall of 2007.

“Every field has its jargon, its way of communicating concepts,” Parker said. “We’re trying to learn to communicate oceanography in ways that public health participants can understand and they are trying to do the same for us.”

The human health expedition included two undergraduates who worked on projects last summer with center researchers.

“A unique attribute of our educational programs is having the resources to use the Thompson in ways that provide both hands-on learning experiences for our students and at the same time enables research that contributes to addressing complex problems of importance to our region,” says Russ McDuff, director of the School of Oceanography.

In addition to the longer cruises last month, the school also offered three shorter outings using the Thompson for undergraduate classes led by lecturer Richard Strickland, professor Chuck Nittrouer and aquatic and fishery science’s Thomas Pool.