Summer 2023
Most deafening
Hatchery salmon experience hearing loss and have fewer sensory organs. » More ...
Fish
Summer 2023
Have you heard?
The ears and sensory cells of fish might be key to understanding, protecting, and even regenerating human hearing. » More ...
Summer 2023
The salmon king
Chinook salmon are cherished in the Pacific Northwest, but they are declining. » More ...
Summer 2018
Trout
One day in a drift boat along Henry’s Fork in eastern Idaho, Kyle Smith ’07 felt the lure of the trout, fly fishing for a signature fish of the West.
“The Henry’s Fork is just about as legendary as it gets among trout fishermen,” says Smith. “I remember casting Renegades, my favorite dry fly for trout, and catching five or six rainbows in a row.”
Smith’s trip cemented itself in his memory and led him to a career in trout conservation with Trout Unlimited. It’s his unique experience, but it matches the stories of many anglers, stories of steelhead and brook trout, cutthroat and browns, … » More …
Spring 2018
Living the fighting spirit
Hunting and rodeoing, playing football and singing in the school choir. For Charles Hudson ’84, growing up in the ’60s and ’70s on the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation in rural North Dakota also meant listening to stories from his Hidatsa mother and white rancher father. One of them was about a huge flood — and it wasn’t a myth.
Six years before Hudson was born, construction of the Garrison Dam submerged 550,000 acres of Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara (the Three Affiliated Tribes) land, resulting in Lake Sakakawea and forcing hundreds of families to flee, including Hudson’s. The tragedy only inspired his parents to triumph over it.
… » More …
Fall 2015
Restoring chaos
WSU researchers seek to prove that an untamed tangle of nature is a prerequisite for long-term salmon survival. » More ...
Summer 2015
Trout, heal thyself
Rainbow trout facing their main illness, coldwater disease, might have a better treatment option in probiotics from their own intestinal bacteria.
» More ...
Winter 2014
Diving deep in a unique tropical paradise
Cori Kane calls it “underwater skydiving.” She’ll be out in the middle of the North Pacific, more than 1,000 miles from Honolulu and most anything else that might be called civilization. Flopping out of a perfectly good boat, she will rocket down nearly 300 feet in just a few minutes, encountering a strange and largely unexplored layer of ocean that’s less familiar to science than the deep sea. It’s the ecosystem of the mesophotic reefs, which lie at a depth often called the “Twilight Zone.”
“When you jump in, it’s like you’re transported to this other world,” says Kane. “There are fish everywhere. There are … » More …
Fall 2012
Finding the River
Jeff Crane ’98, ’04 PhD
Oregon State University Press, 2011
In 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Elwha Act, which called for the removal of two hydroelectric dams from the 45-mile river that flows from Washington’s Olympic Range to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Over the past year, the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams have been removed and now the decades of sediment behind them are … » More …
Summer 2012
A brush with Snorkel Bob
There is the world of science, of measured and verified observations, of slow-moving knowledge.
And there’s a world of advocacy, of convictions, values, passion, and a desire for fast-moving change.
Only a few slides into his PowerPoint on the West Hawaii aquarium fishery, WSU marine biologist Brian Tissot notes how the two views serve to complicate the conflicts around the aquarium trade.
Science, he says, looks at the interest-based aspects of … » More …