This arti­cle writ­ten by Dominic Siv­i­t­il­li… The lab was buzzing with excite­ment when I arrived. A few weeks into the sum­mer term, the water tables of Lab 3 were teem­ing with inver­te­brate life. All vari­eties of mor­phol­o­gy and behav­ior were on dis­play for our class to study. But some­thing was dif­fer­ent today: the lab had  Con­tin­ue Reading

This is from the Cen­ter for Whale Research… Please help us raise $74,000 by year’s end! The $74,000 rep­re­sents one thou­sand dol­lars for each of the sev­en­­ty-four (74) whales in the South­ern Res­i­dent orca com­mu­ni­ty. We all remem­ber J35. In 2018, the whole world watched J35 car­ry her deceased baby for 17 days and 1,000  Con­tin­ue Reading

Are you a gar­den­er in San Juan Coun­ty? Do you enjoy learn­ing and shar­ing your knowl­edge with oth­ers? Have you just moved to the islands and want to get involved in the com­mu­ni­ty and learn about gar­den­ing in our unique ecosys­tem? The WSU Exten­sion San Juan Coun­ty Mas­ter Gar­den­er Vol­un­teer pro­gram may be just what  Con­tin­ue Reading

PADs is look­ing for vol­un­teers who live on San Juan Island and have been diag­nosed with Parkinson’s Dis­ease to par­tic­i­pate in a nov­el research study to deter­mine whether a rela­tion­ship exists between a proven mark­er of neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­ease (ND) and the alert respons­es of the Parkinson’s Alert Dogs. If you are famil­iar with PADs, then you  Con­tin­ue Reading

The fol­low­ing sto­ry is from the Cen­ter for Whale Research (CWR)… In the fol­low­ing Q & A with CWR’s Dr. Michael Weiss, we learn what it’s like to fly a drone over top of whales and the new knowl­edge gained from the cap­tured video footage. 1. Do you launch and fly the Cen­ter for Whale  Con­tin­ue Reading

Joint media response con­cern­ing “the dis­cov­ery of a new kind of killer whale” off west­ern North Amer­i­ca On Octo­ber 4th, Hakai Mag­a­zine pub­lished an arti­cle with a head­line report­ing the dis­cov­ery of “a new kind of killer whale”. Oth­er media out­lets sub­se­quent­ly report­ed sim­i­lar head­lines in Cana­da, theUSA and inter­na­tion­al­ly, and although some con­tent has  Con­tin­ue Reading

Hur­ri­cane Lizards and Plas­tic Squid The Fraught and Fas­ci­nat­ing Biol­o­gy of Cli­mate Change by Thor Han­son There is always rea­son to cel­e­brate the release of a new book by San Juan Island biol­o­gist and author, Thor Han­son. If you’ve read Feath­ers, Seeds, and Buzz, and sat enthralled at one of Thor Hanson’s live­ly and infor­ma­tive pre­sen­ta­tions,  Con­tin­ue Reading

In late August, the SRV SAM, a 48’ alu­minum ketch, set sail from the Hai­da Gwaii Islands in British Colum­bia to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington’s Fri­day Har­bor Labs (FHL) – the lat­est leg of its 8,000 nm voy­age across the North Pacif­ic for the Ocean Genome Atlas Project (OGAP). The ves­sel will be moored at  Con­tin­ue Reading

The Cen­ter for Whale Research shares this sto­ry… What is it, when does it hap­pen, and what are the caus­es? Sev­er­al weeks ago, K21, the old­est male killer whale (orca) in the South­ern Res­i­dent com­mu­ni­ty, was pho­tographed and videoed in a state of severe ema­ci­a­tion, show­ing an extreme ver­sion of what killer whale researchers some­times refer  Con­tin­ue Reading

Engi­neer­ing for US All (e4usa), a nation­al ini­tia­tive to bring engi­neer­ing cours­es to high school stu­dents, is expand­ing its reach for the 2021–2022 aca­d­e­m­ic year. Two years ago, e4usa launched a nov­el engi­neer­ing cur­ricu­lum in high schools across the Unit­ed States. This mul­ti-insti­­tu­­tion­al effort was ini­ti­at­ed by five uni­ver­si­ties: Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land,  Con­tin­ue Reading

Kairos & the Ghost of FHL: Writ­ing in the Moment, by Hol­ly Shel­ton Dr. Hol­ly Shel­ton holds a PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton in lan­guage and rhetoric along with MA degrees in Applied Lin­guis­tics and Teach­ing Eng­lish to Speak­ers of Oth­er Lan­guages. She has taught in Chile, Turkey, Cana­da, Kaza­khstan, and the US; received  Con­tin­ue Reading

Get rrrrready. This is Shug­ga and Mia here at PADs for Parkinson’s giv­ing you a nosey nudge to mark your cal­en­dar for August 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22. These are the dates that you can eas­i­ly dou­ble your efforts to help us and our 14 fur­ry friends at PADs to keep sniff­ing for Parkinson’s Dis­ease.  Con­tin­ue Reading

To all bird watch­ers — Please join us at the San Juan Islands Sculp­ture Park this com­ing Wednes­day, July 21st at 8:00 AM, where Phil Green, will again lead our month­ly Bird Walk.  So far over 30 species have been iden­ti­fied.  Bring binoc­u­lars and mos­qui­to repel­lent.  The park is locat­ed just past the Wel­come Arch on  Con­tin­ue Reading

Microplas­tics and Mus­sel Poops By Lyda Har­ris Lyda Har­ris com­plet­ed her PhD with Emi­ly Car­ring­ton in 2020 in the Depart­ment of Biol­o­gy at UW. For her dis­ser­ta­tion — much of it done at FHL — she stud­ied 1) the impacts of microplas­tic vs silt on marine mus­sel fil­tra­tion rates, 2) how microplas­tics affect the ben­th­ic-pelag­ic  Con­tin­ue Reading

A Sun­flower Star is Born By Jason Hodin, senior research sci­en­tist, Fri­day Har­bor Labs.  Among the world’s hun­dreds of types of known starfish (or seast­ars as I’ll call them), our Pacif­ic coast sun­flower stars are true record break­ers. They are the largest seast­ar in the world, with an arm-tip-to-arm-tip “wingspan” of more than two feet when ful­ly  Con­tin­ue Reading

Twen­ty Years Of Cre­ativ­i­ty At The White­ley Cen­ter By Kath­leen Bal­lard Cow­ell The White­ley Cen­ter, locat­ed at the west end of the cam­pus of the Fri­day Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ries, is cel­e­brat­ing 20 years of pro­vid­ing a place for unin­ter­rupt­ed think­ing and work­ing. The Cen­ter was Helen and Arthur Whiteley’s gift to schol­ars need­ing to escape to  Con­tin­ue Reading