By Vlad Kaczynski
Editor’s Note: Professor Vlad Kaczynski is an Emeritus faculty member at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. In 1976 he joined SMEA (then the Institute for Marine Studies) as a Senior Fulbright Scholar coming to the University of Washington from Poland. He earned degrees from the Merchant Marine Academy, Gdynia, and later to Higher School of Economics in Sopot and finally to University of Gdansk where he obtained his PhD degree in Marine Economics. 

Strategic Planning
By Dave Fluharty
It has been more than 10 years since SMEA developed a Strategic Plan. Many changes have occurred since the last effort and SMEA is facing many challenges. Therefore, SMEA Director Nives Dolšak led faculty and staff into a planning process during Autumn 2023 and Winter 2024 with facilitation by consultants Brian Murphy and Maddie Immel from BERK Consulting, Inc., Seattle. 

The School of Marine and Environmental Affairs will hold its next faculty meeting on Thursday, May 2, at 12:00 pm. Please see below for location details:
Ocean Sciences Building (OCN) Room 203 or via Zoom using the information below:
https://washington.zoom.us/j/98174117556?pwd=V1JQeldTdTFRRFlKc0E4Q3FSMEo2dz09
Meeting ID: 981 7411 7556
Passcode: 563969 US (Seattle)
A copy of the meeting agenda is provided. Please contact Kiley Pazcoguin (kpaz@uw.edu) with any questions or for more information. 

SMEA Professors Ryan Kelly and Terrie Klinger have published their second book, Between the Tides in California: Exploring Beaches and Tidepools. This remarkable book is a follow-up to their first publication, Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon: Exploring Beaches and Tidepools, which was published in December 2022.
Book overview:
“The vast and diverse California coast is an awe-inspiring place of exploration and discovery, full of life forms that are shockingly unfamiliar. 

SMEA alum and affiliate faculty member, Eric Laschever, recently published an article in the Natural Resources & Environment, a quarterly print magazine of informative articles for environmental law practitioners within the American Bar Association. The article titled, “Coastal Resiliency and the Inflation Reduction and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts” discusses how artificial intelligence systems will drive the future of environmental health and safety. 

SMEA Associate Professor Sunny Jardine has been named the new Editor-in-Chief of the journal Marine Resources Economics, which publishes creative and scholarly economic analyses of a range of issues related to natural resource use in the global marine environment. See the announcement from MRE below:
Marine Resource Economics (MRE) is proud to announce the appointment of Sunny Jardine as the journal’s new Editor in Chief, effective January 8, 2024. 

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.  

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.