We welcome Andrea Burton to Marine Biology and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), our newest faculty member. Andrea starts this month as an Assistant Teaching Professor. As a specialist in climate change biology, using molecular and ecological approaches to examine adaptive response to changing conditions, Andrea joins us from UCLA where she was a lecturer.

About to embark on a study abroad adventure is Ellie Thomas, a Marine Biology undergraduate heading into her third year of study at the University of Washington. On 1 September, Ellie will be flying (and driving and boating) more than 5,000 miles away to Veli Lošinj, a small town on one of the western islands of Croatia, nestled in the Adriatic Sea.

In his famous words, Oscar Wilde proposed that life imitates art, meaning that art can shape our understanding of life and inspire us to act in certain ways. So why not science too? Marjorie Wonham, Associate Teaching Professor in UW Marine Biology and SAFS, at Friday Harbor Labs, has published a new study in BioScience outlining the six reasons why integrating arts and sciences in higher education is an effort worth undertaking.

Bryan Lemus, a recent Marine Biology graduate from the University of Washington, worked with a team at Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) studying armored fishes. They study poacher fishes, which are small, bottom-dwelling, cold-water marine fishes covered in dense armor from head to tail.

In our latest student takeover, we were joined by UW Marine Biology student, Charly Cooper, who is interning during the summer of 2025 at the New England Aquarium in Boston. Find out more about her summer internship.

It’s not only invertebrates that are seen along the rocky intertidal. Bella Andre, an undergraduate majoring in ESRM with a minor in Marine Biology, spent almost two weeks this summer with the Marine Landscape Ecology Lab. Where? Just over the border in British Columbia, Canada, conducting drone surveys of long term rocky intertidal study sites and measuring the physical environment around the sites. These surveys will support the lab’s continued understanding of how the habitat at these sites have changed over time.

Now in the fourth week of her NOAA Hollings Scholar internship, Megan Cosand has been immersed in the world of jellyfish research, looking at Skagit Bay’s lion’s mane and fried egg (also known as egg yolk) jellies. Specifically, she has been working with long-term datasets to understand how different environmental factors contribute to blooms of these jellyfish species.
“So far I’ve been working on fitting models to some data for different jellyfish, and the results have changed as the models and data have been updated, so we don’t have a lot of conclusive results yet,” Megan said. 

Working towards a scientific diving certification is an aspiration for some Marine Biology students, opening up a whole new world underwater. For Cali Weber, in her senior year of study at the University of Washington, this journey towards scientific diving started in the summer of 2023 when she attained her diving certification in Chicago, IL. Find out where her diving has taken her since, across Puget Sound.

When Alexias Thao transferred to UW as a third-year student, she was eager to find a research opportunity. But the task seemed daunting. So when Thao heard about a program that places undergraduates in research labs and matches them with graduate student mentors, she was excited to apply. Enter the IBIS program.

A new paper published in Nature Communications on the multiple evolution of glowing fishes, features alumni from the University of Washington, including Jonathan Huie, the first person to graduate from UW Marine Biology.