Tide Bites

Tide Bites: Seeding the Salish Sea: First Steps of an Eelgrass Restoration Project

Disappearance of eelgrass ( Zostera marina) might seem like a trivial topic to some, but it is actually quite a concerning phenomenon. Marine organisms and humans alike rely on the multitude of ecosystem services provided by…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Elizabeth Nilles, Michael Ramsey and Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria

Tide Bites: A Sunflower Star is Born

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"…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Jason Hodin

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Tide Bites: A Tale of Two Research Vessels by Megan Dethier

Visitors to UW Friday Harbor Labs in the last nine months – or those perusing our website, which is easier these days – have seen a sweet new research vessel at our dock. The story of…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Megan Dethier

Tide Bites: Sea Otter Disturbance by Dr. Tiff Stephens

In the summer of 2017, I travelled to FHL for one of my usual short visits of reconnecting with resident scientists and diving into the waters to see how the seaweed communities have changed at favored…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Dr. Tiff Stephens

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Tide Bites: Students Study Kelp Consumers

Katie Dobkowski is a visiting assistant professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and a mentor in the FHL summer REU program. She earned her PhD from the University of Washington in 2017 and has conducted…

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Written by Katie Dobkowski, James Calhoon, Katrina Johnson and Muriel Dittrich

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TIDE BITES: Enhancing Resilience: a Constant Challenge in a Changing Climate

The ocean speaks a language that is understood globally. It has been the mother tongue for generations of people who base their life’s work on its many offerings. We are privileged to work so intimately with…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Kirk Sato

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Tide Bites: Robert F.L. (“Liko”) Self, 1949-2020

Liko Self began his time at UW Friday Harbor Labs shortly after he completed his MS degree in what was then the Department of Oceanography at UW. His curiosity about nature was genuine and deep. Liko…

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Written by Pete Jumars, with Jim Eckman

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Tide Bites: Paying It Forward by Jen Burnaford

My first trip to UW Friday Harbor Labs was in 1995. After completing my undergraduate thesis on freshwater zooplankton and spending a post-bac year chasing primates through the jungles of Borneo, I had been accepted into…

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Written by Jen Burnaford

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Tide Bites: The Virus That Changed the Tree of Life, by Victoria Foe

I came to FHL in 2000 to study cell division, to take advantage of the sea urchins, sea stars and sand dollars whose huge, glassy-clear, permeable and easy-to-manipulate eggs make them ideal subjects for that work.…

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Written by Victoria Foe

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Tide Bites: Boomerang to the San Juans by Alyssa Scott

As the tides of life have ebbed and flowed, I've continually found myself on the shores of FHL. My first encounter with the Labs was via a two-week research sailing expedition through the San Juan Islands…

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Written by Alyssa Scott

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TIDE BITES: What FHL Means to Me by Beth Brainerd

Friday Harbor Lab in the summer of 1985 was both heaven and hell for me. It was mostly heaven: for the first time I was in a community of people who were as passionate about organismal…

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Written by Beth Brainerd

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Tide Bites: Geology of the San Juan Islands by Darrel Cowan

In 2018, I donated a remarkable color map to Friday Harbor Labs called The San Juan Islands, Washington, by Roy D. McClellan. Here I'll describe the role that McClellan and other faculty and students in geology…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Darrel Cowan

Tide Bites: Subtidal Ecology in the Salish Sea

For more than a decade starting in 2006, the Ken Sebens lab collected data on the distribution and abundance (i.e., ecology) of more than 200 taxa across depths at several sites in the San Juan Islands.…

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Written by Derek Smith

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Tide Bites: Mechanical Defenses in Biology

From the moment I decided I wanted to study at a university, I knew it would be in biology. Reading every book on animals I could get my hands on as a kid, I was always…

Published in Tide Bites
Written by Sebastian Kruppert