Date: Friday, February 9th, 2024

SMEA’s Community Reception at Renaissance Seattle Hotel was fabulous! Special thanks to everyone who attended. We look forward to future SMEA events and chances to connect with alumni, supporters, faculty, students and post-docs! 

By Beach Watcher Dave Fluharty
What is this? We are experimenting with ways to engage with our alumni and to inspire current students with their accomplishments. This section is a random walk through what we’ve recently observed about or heard from alumni. Please keep Graduate Program Advisor, Tiffany L. Dion up to date with your accomplishments and changes in location or employment. 

SMEA alumnus Dan Hull spent much of his career gillnetting salmon and longlining halibut in coastal waters out of Cordova, Alaska. 40 years later as he retires from fishing, Hull reflects on his career as a leader in marine resource management, bringing his experience as a commercial fisherman to serve and advise on various fishing, research and education entities in Alaska and internationally. 

Dear SMEA friends!
SMEA is humming with activities. Several walk-in-freezers on the first floor were removed to create space for a large classroom and provide additional workspace for students and postdocs. As the New Year rings in, we will begin planning instructional technology and equipment for the new classroom.
In year 2023, we graduated 45 students and admitted a wonderful cohort of 21 first-year students. 

In the last few years, the U.S. Federal and Washington State governments significantly focused on climate action. In addition to re-joining international climate efforts, President Biden directed U.S. agencies to incorporate the social cost of carbon in their decisions, developed ambitious renewable energy targets, and released the Ocean Climate Plan. In 2022, the U.S. Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included significant support for energy innovation, carbon storage, and energy efficiency. 

SMEA faculty are committed to making our research publicly accessible. Therefore, most of our journal articles are published in open access journals and are hyperlinked in the below list. Faculty names are in bold, names of students and postdoctoral scholars trained by our faculty are underlined.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Aceves-Bueno E, Davids L, Rodriguez-Valencia JA, Jaramillo-Legorreta AM, Nieto-Garcia E, Cárdenas-Hinojosa G, Hidalgo-Pla E, Bonilla-Garzón A, Diaz de Leon AJ, Rojas Bracho L, Cisneros-Mata MA (2023) Derelict gear from an illegal fishery: Lessons from gear retrieval efforts in the Upper Gulf of California.  

Monterey, CA
This November three students from the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs presented their research at the Western Society of Naturalists conference, in Monterey, CA. The annual meeting brings together students, academics, and professionals focusing on ecology, evolution, and natural history along the West Coast of the United States.
Taylor Hughes (she/her/hers, SMEA ‘25) presented a research project she conducted this summer at Friday Harbor Laboratories investigating how temperature affects the microscopic life stages of bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana. 

SMEA professor Patrick Christie and SMEA graduate students were featured in a UW College of the Environment article, titled SMEA students support Indigenous voices in video storytelling project. The article describes a collaboration between SMEA, the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS) and Chief Leschi Schools (CLS) that resulted in transformative storytelling videos about the Salish Sea and Indigenous culture centered on student voices. 

SMEA graduate student Samantha Friborg celebrated with her team as the Husky women’s cross country team qualified for Nationals at the Regional Championships last week.
Washington, the women’s Pac-12 Champions, qualified for the 17th year in a row, placing 17th at the NCAA Championships last season. This season, the team ranked as high as 8th in the USTFCCCA (US Track and Field and Cross County Coaches Association) Coaches Poll. 

Because all living things leave genetic traces in their environments, samples of water, soil, or air are vast storehouses of biological information in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA). SMEA professor Ryan Kelly has worked for more than a decade to make this potential goldmine of information useful for environmental management, making it possible to measure and monitor biodiversity at unprecedented resolution and scale.