Current Research Blogs
Dawson's Blog
Dawson Little, graduate student
1 May 2026
Hi y'all,
April was a really rewarding month, marked by a shift in pace as the project moves out of the lab-heavy phase and further into analysis and writing. After several months of balancing intensive lab work with ongoing writing, it feels like things are beginning to come together in a more cohesive way.
One of the highlights this month was attending another Scholar’s Symposium with the Northwest Straits Foundation, hosted at the University of Washington Arboretum. The setting made for a great event, and it was a valuable opportunity to connect with both board members and past scholars. Getting to hear about the range of projects and career paths represented in that community was genuinely motivating, and it provided helpful perspective on how this work fits into broader efforts in coastal and marine conservation.
Back on the project side, I’ve officially completed my portion of the lab work, which marks a major milestone. After spending most weekends in the lab over the past several months, it’s been a welcome transition to shift focus toward data analysis and writing. Having the time and space to step back and look at the dataset more holistically has been incredibly helpful for thinking through how the different components of the project connect.
This shift has also allowed for more consistent progress on writing. Continuing to develop sections of the thesis alongside early stages of analysis has helped clarify the overall narrative and identify where additional detail or refinement is needed. While there is still a substantial amount of work ahead, especially as analyses continue to develop, it feels like the project is now in a much stronger and more structured place.
Overall, April felt like an important transition point. With lab work largely complete and analytical work underway, the project is moving into a phase where results and interpretation are becoming more tangible. There’s still plenty to do, but it’s encouraging to feel that momentum building and to see things starting to fall into place.
Best,
Dawson
Anna's Blog
Anna Gilboard, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hi everyone!
My independent research has been in full swing lately as I prepare for the NWSSMM conference in Burnaby this Saturday, and the upcoming scholars week on May 13th. One of the biggest things I’ve been working on this month is linking my stranding hotspots to correlation with activity. I’ve started layering in things like population density and coastal access to see whether strandings tend to cluster in places where people are more present. At first glance, there does seem to be some overlap, but it’s not as straightforward as I expected. It raised a really important question for me: are these areas true hotspots for strandings, or are they just places where strandings are more likely to be noticed and reported? Especially in a place like the Salish Sea, where human activity varies so much by location and season, it’s hard to separate biological patterns from reporting bias.
I’ve also been refining my figures for my research poster, which has honestly helped a lot with this. Seeing the spatial patterns mapped out alongside seasonal trends makes it easier to start connecting different pieces of the project. Some locations show up consistently over time, which makes me curious about what’s driving that, whether it’s environmental factors, seal behavior, or human presence. Right now, I’m moving out of the “data processing” stage and into the “interpretation” stage. Instead of just asking what is happening, I’m starting to focus more on why it might be happening, and what I can realistically say with the data I have.
There’s still a lot I can’t fully explain yet, but that’s kind of the point. This project isn’t just about finding answers, it’s about understanding the limits of what we can know, and being careful about how we interpret patterns that might seem obvious at first.
Until next time,
Anna
Camryn's Blog
Camryn Sumrok, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Greetings,
April has been one of the most hectic and productive months I have experienced in the lab so far, largely due to the start of the Smolt Project. As a manager alongside Mallory, the majority of my time has been dedicated to organizing and kick-starting the project. This included coordinating and completing five training sessions, ensuring that all team members were prepared and that protocols were clearly understood before observations began. Managing these responsibilities required a significant amount of planning and communication, but it was rewarding to see everything come together as the season started.
Once fieldwork began, the pace increased quickly. Our first few observation days were very successful, with sightings of harbor seals, a minke whale, and bird species like loons, cormorants, and geese with their goslings! Being back in the field has been a major highlight for me, but it also comes with added responsibility. I have been focused on maintaining consistency in data collection, troubleshooting in real time, and supporting team members during observations, all while ensuring the project runs smoothly overall.
In addition to fieldwork, I spend a few hours each week in the lab working on DNA extractions. It has been tremendously valuable to engage with the molecular side of our research and better understand how field samples are processed into usable data.
Another major focus this month has been preparing for upcoming presentations. Mallory and I have been dedicating a significant amount of time to refining our poster and continuing to revise our manuscript. We have worked through multiple rounds of edits to improve clarity, organization, and overall presentation. This preparation has been especially important as we get ready to present our research at the Marine Mammal Conference at Simon Fraser University in Canada this weekend. We are also preparing for the Biology Showcase and Scholars Week, all of which we are really looking forward to!
Overall, April has been a very challenging but rewarding month. Balancing project management, fieldwork, lab work, and presentation preparation has required strong time management and adaptability. It has been exciting to see the project actively underway and to contribute to its success in a leadership role. I can’t wait to see what May holds and to continue the Smolt Project!
Seals and Salmon,
Camryn
Ellies's Blog
Ellie Taylor, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hi everyone,
This month I finally moved on from optimizing my methods and was able to start running full 96-well plates and generating data! After spending so much time troubleshooting and refining the qPCR protocol, it’s been incredibly rewarding to see everything come together and work at scale.
I’m nearing completion of the samples from the Tsoo-Yess River, and some early patterns are beginning to emerge. So far, the data suggest a strong male bias in the samples collected from this estuary. I’m still in the process of completing the full analysis and accounting for factors like potential resampling of individuals, so these results are very preliminary. That said, it’s exciting to see trends that may align with our initial hypotheses.
If this pattern holds, it could reflect underlying ecological differences in habitat use. The mouth of the Tsoo-Yess River tends to have a higher presence of larger pelagic fish, which may attract more males if they are preferentially foraging in nearshore marine environments. While it’s too early to draw firm conclusions, these initial findings hint at the kinds of sex-specific patterns we set out to investigate.
This month I will be presenting at the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society of Marine Mammalogy Conference and at Scholars Week. Preparing these my presentation and poster has been a valuable opportunity to synthesize the progression of the project, from early protocol development through data generation. I am looking forward to sharing these preliminary findings with a broader audience and engaging with other researchers to gain feedback that will help guide the next stages of the project.
Moving forward, I’ll be finishing the remaining samples from this site and the samples collected along the Wa'atch River, then beginning more rigorous data analysis to validate these trends. It feels great to finally be in the data generation phase, and I’m looking forward to seeing how these patterns develop as more samples are processed.
Cheers,
Ellie
Bea's Blog
Bea Macagno, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hi readers!
This is my first blog post so allow me to introduce myself: my name is Bea Macagno, and I am a MMEL post-baccalaureate researcher. I am working with grad student Alex Otto and undergrad student Luke Shrader to analyze genetic data for understanding population structure of harbor seals in Puget Sound and the Olympic Coast. It has been very rewarding work, and Luke and I will be co-presenting our initial results at the Northwest Student Society of Marine Mammalogy Conference at Simon Fraser University this weekend (May 2nd) which we are looking forward to! I am also involved in extracting DNA from scat for pinniped diet studies in collaboration with WDFW, which has been the highlight of my week since I started in October.
When I’m not fighting with R or locked in on pipetting, you might find me at the barn or on the beach! I am stoked about the longer days and looking forward to warmer weather for riding, paddleboarding and swimming :)
Ciao,
Bea
Siena's Blog
Siena Gorohoff, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hi! This past week has been super busy, this Saturday is the Northwest Student Society of Marine Mammals Conference up in Canada, so we’ve been working hard to polish our poster to present our research there. We also have scholars week coming up soon, which should feel pretty easy after the conference this weekend. We got all of our graphs, maps and figures done last week and early this week and it was a bit of a puzzle to get everything to fit nicely together on our poster, but I think what we ended up with is really nice. It also been nice to have the poster to work on because we’ve had to think about what the most important findings and ideas from our research are since we have such a small area to present them in, but because of that we now have a really nice outline for what we want to talk about when we start writing the paper.
Outside of Chloe and my project, the smolt observation has started again. I had my first one earlier this week at Whatcom creek and we saw two seals and a bunch of goslings all hanging around at the creek, but at the same time the people at the log pond sight got to see whales in the bay, which is probably a bit cooler than our gosling visitors.
With the conference and scholars week coming up it feels like my focus has almost entirely been on getting the poster finished, but other classes have also been going really well, and this quarter feels 100x more calm than last quarter.
I’m looking forward to more spring observations at the creek. It's been a lot of fun seeing the seals hanging around, way more than I saw in winter, and it is going to be fun to see as more and more gosling and duckling families start coming back to the creek. But I also hope I can see the whales at some point this spring. If they hang out in the bay a little longer (and I have a bit of good luck) I might get a chance to see them!
See you next month!
Siena
Mallory's Blog
Mallory Stonier, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hello everyone,
Smolt season has arrived! We began observations on April 27th, and so far, it has been amazing. If you are unfamiliar, in the Smolt project we are studying the change in foraging behavior of harbor seals before and after the Bellingham Technical College Hatchery releases juvenile salmon at Whatcom Creek from April 27th through May 31st. Observations, like the Whatcom Creek project, last two hours long but occur at 5:30h and 18:00h every day with three researchers at Whatcom Creek and three researchers at the Log Pond site.
This year, several researchers have seen whales on observations which I think bodes well for the project in both action and luck. Thus far, folks have seen a minke whale, an orca, gray whales, a river otter, and lots of baby goslings! Everyone is excited to be involved, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know new lab members. Our leads have also been hard at work, and we appreciate all of the time MMEL researchers have been pitching in.
Goose parents and their goslings and Whatcom Creek (28 April 2026). Photo by M Stonier.
View from Log Pond Site A (19:49h 28 April 2026). Photo by M Stonier.
View from Log Pond, Site C (6:11h 29 April 2026). Photo by M Stonier.
This month, Camryn and I are presenting alongside the other managers at the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (NWSSMM) 2026 Conference, Scholar’s Week, and a Biology Showcase. We are super excited to be presenting our preliminary results, and just as happy to be simultaneously collecting another season of data. This will put us at 4 years of data to analyze, meaning our dataset and its implications are strengthening.
My classes have been a lot of fun this quarter, and I have really been enjoying the organic chemistry lab and learning new techniques. I’ve continued volunteering for WEH in the molecular side of the lab as well, which is always a highlight of my week.
The weeks are flying by quickly, especially now that Smolt observations have started. While there is a lot to look forward to, it’s bittersweet to see so many graduates go. I joined the lab with many of them, and I will miss seeing them not just around the lab but on campus. I’m grateful to be making the most of my time with everyone, including being able to attend lab meetings and hear about everyone’s research.
Seals and Smolt,
Mallory
Zoe's Blog
Zoe Hosford, graduate student
1 May 2026
I am officially at the point where my thesis is almost done, which still feels a little unreal.
This month was mostly about revisions and getting everything into a form that I can actually hand to other people. I spent a lot of time working through comments, rewriting sections that were not as clear as I thought, and making sure everything lines up from introduction through discussion. A lot of it was small fixes that added up, but there were also a few sections that needed bigger rewrites to make the story flow the way it should.
I also spent a lot of time cleaning up figures and tables, so they are consistent and ready for the final document. That meant reformatting plots, adjusting legends, standardizing color schemes, and reworking a few figures so they are easier to interpret without a long caption. I kept going back and forth between figures and text, since changing one usually meant adjusting the other. It took longer than expected, but it makes everything feel much more polished.
At the same time, I was putting together my poster for the Northwest Student Society for Marine Mammalogy conference. That involved rebuilding several figures for the poster format, cutting down text, and figuring out how to present the results clearly without relying on a lot of explanation. The conference is coming up at the start of May, so I have been finishing that up and getting ready to present a more complete version of this project
I have also started preparing a short presentation for Scholars Week in mid-May. It is a very different format, so I have been working on how to explain the project clearly in just a few minutes without getting too far into the details. It has been a good exercise in figuring out what actually needs to be said versus what can be left out.
I have been continuing to TA this quarter as well, which has been a consistent part of my schedule alongside everything else. It has been a good balance to the thesis work and a reminder to step outside of my own project and think about broader concepts again.
Outside of thesis work, I have also been getting things set up for starting my PhD at Clemson this fall. I will be coming in as a research assistant (RA) working on walrus quantitative ecology, which is a pretty big shift from my current system but also something I am really excited about. With recent funding extensions and new grants in the lab, I will be stepping into a position where I need to hit the ground running, so I have been starting to think ahead about potential projects and what that transition will look like. At the same time, there is a lot of logistical planning happening, including figuring out another cross country move, emails about paperwork and housing, and trying to keep track of everything that needs to happen before I leave. It has been a strange overlap of finishing one project while also starting to mentally step into the next one.
Looking ahead, the next steps for my thesis are my pre-defense meeting, final revisions, and then my defense. Everything is starting to feel very close to finished.
t mostly just feels like I am wrapping things up while also getting pulled in a lot of different directions at the same time. Between revisions, teaching, poster prep, presentation slides, planning a move across the country, and trying to remember to eat and sleep, everything feels a little stacked right now. I am excited, but also very aware that I am almost done here, which is a weird feeling after spending so long on this project. It still has not fully hit me yet, but I am choosing not to think too hard about that right now.
Until Next Time,
Zoe
Luke's Blog
Luke Shrader, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hello there,
If you hadn’t noticed, this is my first blog, so a brief introduction is in order. My name is above, this is my second year in the MMEL and my last quarter at WWU, and I’m currently engaged in a project about the spatial population genetic structure of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) throughout the Puget Sound and Washington’s outer coast. I’m passionate about asking nuanced questions about complex natural systems and attempting to answer them with computational tools, dynamic models, and good old inference.
This month has been especially busy. My research partner, Bea Macagno, and I are presenting our preliminary project results in poster form at the NWSSMM conference at Simon Fraser University this coming Saturday. We’ve analyzed lots of harbor seal data to come to conclusions about the relationship between genetic variation and geographic distance in harbor seals, how this variation arises, and the implications of this information for managing seal populations for overall ecosystem health. Embarking on this project has been especially exciting for me because my early lab work consisted of collecting seal behavior data for the Log Pond project, during which I spent time wondering about seal livelihood in the Salish Sea and beyond.
Otherwise, my last push to graduate is going well. I’m working my way through two advanced math classes, reflecting on my self-designed degree in a seminar class, and making the most of the educational resources at my fingertips before I move on. Overall, I’m excited for the future: for the conference coming up this weekend in the short-term, and for the end of my undergraduate journey in the long term. I hope you all are excited for the future, too.
Best,
Luke Shrader
Chloe's Blog
Chloe Bentley, undergraduate student
1 May 2026
Hello everyone!
It's great to be back. This quarter has flown by. Now we have all our new recruits trained and ready to go! It has been fun getting to know all of them and seeing them fit right into our lab. Our meetings are a great place to see everyone and talk all things science! It's a great community!
WC creek has been beautiful than ever with Spring rolling in! Lots of animals to see and observe. SMOLT has also kicked off which is very exciting! On some early observations out at LP people have seen whales in the bay! It's been happening increasingly lately.
Speaking of whales...Siena and I have finished our poster!! We are super excited. We will be sharing our poster 'Sighting and Stranding Events of Cetaceans in the Salish Sea' at a conference in Canada! It's both our first time doing so, and we are looking forward to the experience. We have shifted our research slighting, focusing also on mortality events within the stranding 'hotspots'. We were also looking more closely at the years and how many stranding reports there were. We found that after 2019, there was a sharp drop off. Very curious if that has anything to do with COVID and people not being out to report! Lots of possible future research and ways to incorporate more data. We are also looking forward to scholar week and seeing everyone's poster there!
Spring quarter has already flown by; classes are very interesting and engaging. I am taking my last biology class, entomology! That has been a fun way to kick off my biology degree. Were out in the field looking for specimens yesterday and it was an adventure.
Now we are heading into the bulk of SMOLT season (how fun!) and only have a month and some change left until graduation. Crazy how time flys, but so happy to be here with MMEL and my biology peers!
See you next time!
Seals and Salmon,
Chloe