Director's Report

By Professor Billie J. Swalla, Director of FHL

Greetings from the Director’s Office! FHL's Summer A session is kicking off and we are pleased to welcome students and researchers from all over the world. We'll spend the long days of summer enjoying life on this beautiful campus and San Juan Island. The new FHL Administrator, Jeff Bronstein, and I are busy planning for a bright and sustainable future for the Labs.







FHLSOP

By Jenny Roberts

Friday Harbor Labs Science Outreach Program (FHLSOP) is in its 16th year of bringing hands-on, inquiry-based science into the classroom, out in the field and aboard the Research Vessel Centennial to our local K-12 students of San Juan School Island District (SJISD) and Spring Street International School (SSIS). Our program allows students to be scientist in every grade and has become an integral part of the local schools curriculum! These experiences are invaluable for developing students’ interest, passion, concern and understanding of their surrounding natural environment.







Whiteley Center's Macfarlane Artist Studio

By Billie Swalla, with Robbie Macfarlane & Pog Summers

The Macfarlane Artist Studio has emerged through the joint efforts of Arthur Whiteley, Dennis Willows and Robbie Macfarlane over the past ten years. Arthur and Dennis, like many scientists, always had a strong interest in art, artists, and the creative process. Robbie had been on the museum board at Cal Tech when there was a museum building on campus, and hoped to create a similar space at FHL.







Friday Harbor High School: a STEM update

By Derek Smith

Hard to believe we’re almost through the 2016-17 academic year in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Program at the San Juan Island School District, where creating and innovating continues in our amazing workshop! This year, the Fall semester included Robotics, Digital Production, Advanced Game Design, Digital Photography, and a new Renewable Sustainable Futures class.








Advancement Board Chair Report

By Flo McAlary

Behind the scenes at Friday Harbor Laboratories there’s a devoted group of more than 30 individuals who serve at the pleasure of the Director, as the FHL Advancement Board (AB). Members of this board come from diverse backgrounds including academia, business, the arts, and interested citizens. Their commonality: they share a love and appreciation for FHL!







FHL's Advancement Board: 20 Years Young

By Megumi Strathmann & Dennis Willows

There has been a profound transition in the focus of FHL over the past 50 years: back in the day, FHL supported relatively few undergrads. Summer course offerings were focused on topics for professional development of grad students, and the University and FHL Director viewed FHL as a graduate enterprise to train research scientists and teachers, and to promote discovery of new knowledge.







FHL Student Support

By Rachel Anderson

Spring is the highly anticipated time of year when much about the upcoming FHL summer sessions falls into place. For the past few months, applications from talented young scientists have been arriving steadily. Our FHL student coordinator Stacy Markman, together with Megan Dethier, Associate Director for Academics and the Environment, spent January and February reviewing applications and letters from students from universities around the globe.







Fantastic Voyage

By Jason Hodin

Scientists and science enthusiasts alike are familiar with many of our iconic sea shore creatures: crabs, worms, sea anemones, sea stars, sea urchins, tidepool fish and seaweeds. What is less appreciated is that almost all of these creatures lead a dual existence, one part of which occurs at a microscopic stage.










Ocean Acidification Environmental Lab (OAEL) at FHL

By Rebecca Guenther

The Ocean Acidification Environmental Laboratory (OAEL) at FHL is a state-of-the-art experimental and instructional facility for conducting research on ocean change. This unique center houses an analytical laboratory for measuring seawater chemistry as well as indoor mesocosms for experimentation, allowing researchers to conduct biological experiments and analyze seawater chemistry on-site as their projects proceed.






Linking UW and Carribean Research

By Walter Mustin

Aquaculture and mariculture became the focus of intense interest to me in my senior year at UW (class of 1975) after attending a series of guest lectures at the School of Fisheries delivered by Dr. Ling of what is now the Peoples Republic of China. Dr. Ling was the first researcher to “close the loop” by completing the life cycle of the giant freshwater shrimp Macrobrachium rosenbergii in captivity. This feat was not unlike UW’s Dr. Donaldson’s early work with steelhead trout, where fry released from eggs hatched on the UW campus eventually returned to the campus as adults, having made a remarkable journey from Lake Union to the Alaska peninsula and back to Lake Union.







Dr. Rebecca Johnston joins NeuroEvoDevo at FHL

By Jim Truman & Lynn Riddiford

We are very pleased to welcome Rebecca Johnston to the scientific community at FHL, where she has joined our project on Arthropod NeuroEvoDevo in Lab 10. I first met Rebecca about six years ago when she joined the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Northern Virginia as a Research Specialist for the FlyLight Project, a large project focused on the neuroanatomy of the Drosophila (fruit fly) central nervous system.







Manager of Marine Ops

By Meegan Corcoran

Friday Harbor Labs warmly welcomes Meegan Corcoran as the newly fulltime Manager of Marine Operations. Meegan stepped into the position in October 2015, but has recently been made fulltime. She and her crew have been working diligently making improvements to the R/V Centennial as well as promoting the vessel. Meegan also oversees the dock and small boats, via Kristy Kull.








We miss you, Koz.

By Megan Dethier

A gentle FHL giant passed away on March 4, 2017, at the age of 96: Dr. Eugene N. Kozloff. Most FHL associates probably knew Koz from some point in their careers, and even those who never had the pleasure of interacting with him probably knew of him through his books. Kozloff was a Renaissance man with encyclopedic knowledge and boundless love of the natural world, and they broke the mold after they made him.







Dr. S. Jonathan Stern

By Frances Robertson

Dr. Jonathan Stern, a marine ecologist and leading marine mammal expert, died on 16 February 2017, just years 62 young. He was a long-standing researcher at the Friday Harbor Labs and a professor in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University.








In the News

• Adam Summers spoke on Biomimetrics at a Cal State Fullerton symposium in March.

• Oregon Field Guide featured former FHL post-doc Robin Kodner in a video about bioluminescence in the Northwest.

• PBS Seattle's story on Adam Summers' mission to #ScanAllFish.

• Matt Kolmann (FHL postdoc) was interviewed on NPR about shark teeth.

• An article from The Stranger about a Poetry & Science weekend at FHL in which Jenny Shrum (National Park Service) presented on the Island Marble Butterfly.

• Shawn Luttrell (grad student in Billie Swalla's lab) was interviewed by King 5 news about worm regeneration.

• NY Times article about the robo-mussel study conducted by Helmuth, Gilman, Nishizaki, Carrington, and O'Donnell.

• An article in UW's The Daily featured the importance of research being done in the Ocean Acidification Environmental Lab at FHL.




Coming Events

Paul Illg Distinguished Lectureship
Dr. Lauren Mullineaux, a biological oceanographer, Senior Scientist and Chair of the Biology Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, will present two lectures.
Public lecture: Monday June 26, 7pm San Juan Community Theater, "Are deep-sea hydrothermal vent communities resilient to disturbance?"
Scientific lecture: Wednesday June 28, 7pm FHL Commons, "Larval behavior in response to cues in a dynamic ocean."

Koz Fest
Please join us for a potluck gathering in Gene's honor in the FHL Commons on Saturday July 29, 3pm-6.

Jazz at the Labs
The annual fundraiser for our K-12 program, $40 per ticket includes dinner and music. Saturday August 12, 6pm-9:30 (doors open at 5:30). This event often sells out! Call 360-378-2165 ext. 0 to reserve tickets by paying in advance.