A husky for life, not just for Christmas

After spending my first weekend failing to crack jet lag but successfully orientating myself around Seattle, I was just about ready to get started on Monday.  To be honest, I had been feeling a little anxious as I wasn't able to make that many firm arrangements to meet people before arriving.  Nevertheless, bright eyed and busy tailed, I jumped on the hydro-electric bus and made my way to the University of Washington.

Seattle is quite an environmentally conscious city, besides the eco-friendly buses, many electric cars roam Seattle as part of the national Electric Vehicle Prjoect.  Cycling to work also appears to be popular but not to the same degree as in The Netherlands.  Although you can't attach your bike to a Dutch bus.  There are also many recycling points throughout the city to encourage residents and visitors to recycle their waste.  The University itself is also ranked highly when it comes to envronmental initatives.

The University sits on a 700 acre campus on the edge of Lake Union.  The main campus is off Central Plaza, also known as Red Square because of the brick.  There was no need for me to worry about my first day at the University.  After going through the formality of various paperwork, I went to meet Prof. Ray Hilborn at the School of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.  I later met Ray's research team at their weekly lab meeting where we discussed Costello et al's., including Ray Hilborn, latest offering to Science Express entitled 'Status and solutions for the world's unassessed fisheries'. I was made to feel very welcome and will be spending time meeting with various people from Ray's department over the coming weeks.  In a few weeks time I will be giving a summary of my research and talk about my Winston Churchill Memorial Trust travelling fellowship.

Later in the week I met Ray with Dr. Dan Holland and one of Ray's PhD students, Kotaro Ono.  Dan Holland works at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), one of six regional science centres for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) referred to as National Marine Fisheries who conduct research to support management and conservation of the Pacific Northwest region's marine fishery resources.  Unfortunately because I am a foreign national I was not able to meet Dan at the NWFSC, instead he came to meet us at the University.  We talked about what I wanted to achieve from my fellowship and who I should meet with during my time in Seattle, Ray and Dan are very well connected.  During my fellowship I shall be aiming to find out the differences between the USA and Scotland when it comes to participatory fisheries management and fishing industry led conservation initiatives.

So, after the first week of my fellowship I have begun organising meetings with people.  I have also organised dates for my trip to Vancouver to visit some people at Archipelago Marine Research and hopefully some industry representatives. 

During my first week I also attended the weekly departmental seminar.  Glen Van Blaircom gave a fascinating talk about the near extinction and resurrection of a black abalone population on a small island, San Nicolas, off the Californian coast. Glen passionately talked about his research on black abalone over the last 30 years.  Glen gave us an insight into the devastating effects of withering syndrome that swept through the population, killing 99.2% of the population in the early 1990s, the subsequent growth in the population two decades later and the management challenges that lie ahead.


All visiting scholars to the University of Washington are given honorary status as Huskies, the University logo, for life.

 On that note, I sign-off as a Husky.  More to follow at the end of this week!