SMEA is saddened to share the passing of Terry Johnson. Please see Alaska Sea Grant’s Remembering Terry Johnson article here. 

SMEA graduate and former Canadian Studies FLAS fellow, Samantha Farquahar (’19), received the Fulbright-Hayes award to continue her fisheries research in Arctic Québec (Nunavik). Below is the article posted in the Department of Education’s IFLE newsletter. Congratulations, Samantha!

Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellow studies fisheries, food systems, and indigenous food security in Canada

Samantha Farquhar, a doctoral student in the Integrated Coastal Sciences program at East Carolina University (ECU), will travel to northern Quebec next year to study and document how fisheries relate to food systems in nearby coastal Canadian communities. 

This issue of the Alumni Focus shines on Jenny Waddell, the Research Coordinator for Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS). Jenny’s career is representative of the many SMEA graduates who have been selected for the prestigious Knauss Fellowship (a national award administered locally by Washington Sea Grant – and the application process just opened).
Jenny graduated from SMEA in 2001 with a thesis on sustainable tourism development for Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras. 

In 1972, the Board of Regents of the University of Washington authorized the formation of the Institute for Marine Studies. In the last 50 years SMEA has graduated nearly 800 alumni who are putting their skills to work around the world — a formidable force for improving human and environmental well-being. Here we report on a representative few alumni to inspire current students and to link alumni to friends. 

SMEA faculty continue to contribute to the scholarship of marine and environmental affairs. In 2022, we published two books and over 30 articles in prestigious environmental, marine, and interdisciplinary journals. Many of these were co-authored with our students and our postdoctoral scholars. Below is a collection of these works. Faculty names are in bold; names of students and postdoctoral scholars trained by our faculty are underlined. 

The North Pacific snow and red king crab seasons are canceled this year, affecting entire communities that support the industry. Factors such as dropping populations from overfishing and climate change contributed to crab harvests being suspended this year.
SMA alumna Jamie Goen is the Executive Director for the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. In a KIRO 7 news article Jamie said in 2018 there were a lot of small snow crabs in the ocean and things were looking really good. 

SMEA graduate Amy Olsen has just published her thesis research in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Amy’s work describes the effect of the Pacific Marine Heatwave (2014-2015) on coral reef fish communities in West Hawai’i. Her findings reveal changes in fish abundance following with the heatwave, and suggest an association with site-specific management regimes. The research was performed in partnership with the Seattle Aquarium where Amy currently works as a Research Technician in the Conservation Programs and Partnerships Department. 

 
Five recent SMEA graduates Abigail Ames, Kathryn Loy, Jenna Rolf, Harshitha Sai Viswanathan and Olivia Zimmerman have been awarded the Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowship for 2022–2023. This fellowship places highly motivated, qualified individuals with marine and coastal host offices throughout Washington, providing fellows with a unique perspective on building marine policy and allowing them to share their academic expertise with the host offices. 

SMEA graduates Samantha Klein (’21), James Lee (’21), Sallie Lau (’20), and current SMEA student Bryce Lewis-Smith, along with SMEA Assistant Professor Cleo Wölfle-Hazard and accompanying authors recently published an article in The American Naturalist titled, “Transforming Restoration Science: Multiple Knowledges and Community Research Cogeneration in the Klamath and Duwamish Rivers [journals.uchicago.edu].”
Typical practices in restoration science can perpetuate exclusionary and oppressive paradigms in both ecosystem restoration and restoration policymaking. 

SMEA alums and faculty represented at the recent PCSGA Annual Shellfish Conference held this year in Wenatchee, Washington. In attendance were SMEA alums Jessi Florendo (’22), Kalloway Page (’21), Sam Klein (’21), and Emily Buckner (’20). SMEA Professor of Practice Yoshitaka Ota was a keynote speaker. “It was fun to be among good company in an unfamiliar place!” shared Florendo.
The PCSGA Annual Shellfish Conference is a convening of growers, natural resource managers, regulators, academics, and others involved in the regional shellfish industry to gather and discuss modern problems, scientific inquiry, and collaborative solutions to all nature of problems.