Tide Bite – June 2022

While most research at FHL focuses appropriately on marine organisms and local field sites, the essay below illustrates how profoundly powerful it can be to do comparative biology – in this case, drawing connections between the development of crustaceans like barnacles and shrimp, and insects like fruit flies.  

Tide Bite – May 2022

The essay below shows that at FHL we ‘do’ birds, too!  At least two of our classes each year spend some time studying seabirds or sea-associated birds, like the kingfishers described below.  

Tide Bite – April 2022

In recent months we have had Tide Bites about boats, mud, oceanography, history, fog, octopus…but none can rival the cuteness of the little fish discussed in Ella’s essay below.  Some of us see these animals as an example of Natural Selection having a sense of humor – a little round fish with a suit of armor, really?  

March 2022 Tide Bite

Greetings,
We wrote ~a year ago (Feb. 2021 Tide Bite) about our two most recent research vessels, the R/Vs Centennial and Kittiwake.  Here are tales about the FHL boats that preceded those two: almost 120 years of research vessels, described by our unofficial historian and some of the boat operators and users! 

February 2022 Tide Bite

Greetings,

Last month’s Tide Bite was about a new apprenticeship course, starting from scratch to seek an understanding of the False Bay ecosystem.  This month’s describes a well-established apprenticeship, one of the first offered at FHL and definitely the longest-running.   

January 2022 Tide Bite

Greetings,

One of the criteria for choosing courses that we offer at FHL is that they take advantage of the natural surroundings, i.e. they couldn’t just as well be taught on the Seattle campus or in Nebraska or New York.  

December 2021 Tide Bite

Greetings,
This is FHL’s 100th Tide Bite! To mark this milestone, we asked Dennis Willows to write an essay covering some of FHL’s long and rich history (of which he was a big part, as Director for 32 years). 

November 2021 Tide Bite

Greetings,

Few members of the general public are interested in crabs (except to eat) or slugs (except as garden pests) or worms (except a general “eewww” response), but almost everyone finds octopuses to be genuinely engaging invertebrates. 

October 2021 Tide Bite

Greetings,

While most research at FHL for its 110+ years has focused on marine organisms and habitats — especially seaweeds, invertebrates and fishes — a generous donation in the last year has allowed us to “expand the tent.” We offered fellowships to “new” scientists who have never worked at FHL but who are faculty at UW or other institutions to come and work here for several weeks or months to see if this is a location where their research can be effectively accomplished. 

September 2021 Tide Bite

Greetings,
For centuries, methods for biologists to learn about the ‘innards’ of whole organisms involved dissections of dead specimens. This is still an essential tool, but now we have added wonderful new methods to our toolbox.