Background Articles

Dataset from Dr. Brian Burke (NOAA; brian.burke@noaa.gov); derived from surface trawls taken during NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center Juvenile Salmon & Ocean Ecosystem Survey (JSOES).

Considered the most destructive pest slug in Europe, the Spanish slug, or Arion lusitanicus, or Arion vulgaris, or sometimes Geoff (there’s some controversy over the name, thanks to the fact that the Arion genus contains up to 50 species and they all look a lot like one another) is between 7-15cm long and can weigh up to 15kilos if it’s sitting on a dog.

Warmer temperatures and declining sea ice pulls foreign animals and plants to the Arctic, with drastic consequences for these sensitive ecosystems.

In August 2017, Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak was awarded funding by USFWS Tribal Wildlife Grant (TWG) Program. The two-year project, titled “Distribution, Movement and Diet of Invasive Crayfish Populations in Buskin River Watershed on Kodiak Island, Alaska” focuses on characterizing the distribution (snorkel/scuba diving surveys), movement (radio tagging) and diet (stable isotope analyses) of the Signal Crayfish population within Buskin Watershed.

Climate change has warmed the waters east of Tasmania at four times the speed of the global average. But the heatwave of the southern summer of 2015/2016 was something exceptional, damaging fisheries and bringing new species to the island. It's a sign of things to come, say the researchers examining these events.

Wild salmon from the Pacific coast of North America may be infected with Japanese tapeworms, according to a study in a CDC-published journal.

B.C salmon farms last year were besieged by sea lice, according to a new University of Toronto study, which also found a dangerously steep rise of infestation among young wild salmon who swam nearby.

FioRito, Rebecca, Celeste Leander, and Brian Leander. "Characterization of three novel species of Labyrinthulomycota isolated from ochre sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus." Marine Biology 163.8 (2016): 1-10.

Contagious cancers occur in clams and other bivalves, and some can even spread between different species of bivalves.

There's somewhat of a slow motion invasion of a fresh water crustacean happening in Buskin River and Buskin Lake. It has a hard shell, two claws and tastes great in pies.

Populations of marine wildlife have plummeted by a half on average over the past 40 years with some species suffering far greater declines as a result of habitat loss, overfishing, rising sea temperatures and worsening ocean acidity, a major report has found.

The "unprecedented" warm water in the Pacific caused a massive toxic algae bloom from California to Alaska.

The lobster population has crashed to the lowest levels on record in southern New England while climbing to heights never before seen in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches — a geographic shift that scientists attribute in large part to the warming of the ocean.

Scientists first caught on to the strange event when they found thousands of purple sea urchins and other organisms dead in their laboratory tanks. Their theory: The mass deaths were caused by a huge bloom of algae.

If you're wondering why British Columbia experienced such a mild winter and early spring, you could maybe blame it on a mysterious "blob" of warm water in the Pacific Ocean.

For decades, the crab piled up in fishing boats like gold coins hauled from a rich and fertile sea. But the very ocean that nursed these creatures may prove to be this industry’s undoing.Scientists fear ocean acidification will drive the collapse of Alaska's iconic crab fishery.

Management of the fishery for California sea cucumbers Parastichopus californicus in the Pacific Northwest is limited by a lack of natural growth rate estimates.These findings are an important addition to the knowledge of California sea cucumber biology and are valuable for the stock assessment, fisheries management, and aquaculture of this species.

Our results showed that local fisheries have negatively impacted the marine biodiversity of the ecosystem causing sharp declines of common dolphins and major fish stocks and weakening the robustness of the marine food web.

A parasitic isopod that scientists identified five years ago has all but decimated mud shrimp populations in coastal estuaries ranging from British Columbia to northern California - with the exception of a handful of locations in Oregon from Waldport to Tillamook.

July 23, 2007 – Over the last five years, large, predatory Humboldt squid have moved north from equatorial waters and invaded the sea off Central California, where they may be decimating populations of Pacific hake, an important commercial fish.