“We’ve known for a long time that there are very low levels of arsenic in the ocean,” said co-author Gabrielle Rocap, a UW professor of oceanography. “But the idea that organisms could be using arsenic to make a living — it’s a whole new metabolism for the open ocean.”

José M. Guzmán, Acting Instructor within the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, is one of this year’s seven recipients of the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Marine biology instructor José Guzmán flipped his classroom; upending the traditional way of teaching and learning, with instructors delivering lectures online so students can learn outside the classroom at their own pace and time. More interactive activities, such as tackling case studies, move into the classroom, allowing students to work together and with the instructor to solve problems. Video has become a key tool to deliver important material outside the classroom, which had been previously done in a lecture format.

“Tide Bites” is the monthly newsletter of UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. This month, two of the instructors of the Marine Subtidal Ecology course Dive Officer Pema Kitaeff and Dr. Alex Lowe write about what it takes to be a scientific diver at the University of Washington. This course is currently scheduled to be offered in the summer of even years (the next offering will be summer 2020) at Friday Harbor Labs, and interested students are encouraged to contact the Marine Biology Adviser for more information.

When it comes to the well-being of coral reefs, for many years scientists focused on bleaching, an event that can endanger corals and the diverse marine ecosystems that they support. In bleaching, high temperatures or other stressors cause corals to expel Symbiodinium, the beneficial, brightly colored microbes that would normally share excess energy and nutrients with corals. Bleaching ultimately starves corals and endangers the entire reef ecosystem.

But over the last two decades, scientists have realized that other microbes are also critical for coral health, including communities of bacteria that live on coral surfaces and in their tissues. These bacteria constitute the coral microbiome. High temperatures — even below the threshold for bleaching — can disrupt coral microbiomes, leaving corals vulnerable to disease.

Uniquely positioned in the region, the University of Washington (UW) has established itself as a world-leader in the fields of Oceanography and Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. The UW is thrilled to announce that it will be expanding the scope of its marine science offerings to include a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Marine Biology. While students could minor in Marine Biology, this is the first time it will be offered as a major at the UW.

“Tide Bites” is the monthly newsletter of UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. This month, FHL guest researcher Graham Short discusses his research in Adam Summers’ lab on pygmy seahorses.

“Tide Bites” is the monthly newsletter of UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. This month, outgoing FHL Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Brent Hughes discusses his research on river otters. Read a short excerpt below, or read the full story at: http://depts.washington.edu/fhl/tidebites/Vol61/index.html. Dr. Hughes talks about his work with three undergraduates working under ‘Doris Duke Conservation Fellowships’. Undergraduates from UW or any school are invited to learn more about this summer opportunity at http://uwconservationscholars.org/.

A vast underwater network of systems and sensors are capturing rich, never-before-accessed data from the mysterious world beneath our oceans.

To build a stronger community of scientists using that data to make new discoveries, oceanographers will convene at the UW for Oceanhackweek, August 20-24, 2018, five intensive days of collaborative investigations and tutorials in modern data analysis tools and techniques.

It’s always good to know where great white sharks are likely to be swimming. That’s true if you’re a nervous beachgoer, a fishing boat trying to avoid illegal bycatch, or a marine biologist hoping to conserve this vulnerable species. A study from the University of Washington and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution looked at the movements of adult female white sharks in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Ocean. Results showed, surprisingly, that they prefer warm-water eddies — the clockwise-spinning whirlpools in the ocean — and tend to spend more time deep inside these slowly spinning features.