May Meeting – Sharks and Rockfish

Unfortunately, our original speaker, Lisa Hillier was unable to attend, but she arranged to have her colleague at WDFW, Bob Pacunski step in for her. Bob is also a research scientist at WDFW, and also works with NOAA and other agencies. He covered Lisa’s Sharks of the Salish Sea, but he also shared fascinating information about his own research focus: population and habitat of Puget Sound groundfish, particularly rockfish.

Twenty two SeaHorses came out to listen to Bob. We learned about shark species, their habitat and ranges, and methods for tagging and tracking, plus the history and status of our Puget Sound groundfish, their habitat, the effects of overfishing and habitat degradation, especially from bulkheads along the shore, and efforts underway to reverse declines. Bob took lots of questions from the audience, and I’m afraid interest was so high that we stayed past closing. Staff at Bob’s was very gracious in letting us finish up. Many thanks to them for their awesome venue, excellent food and service, and their patience.

We really appreciated Bob filling in on short notice and giving a great talk. We’ll have Lisa back at a future meeting to focus exclusively on sharks.

I’d also like to thank everybody who came out. It was good to see everybody and even a few new faces.

SeaHorses Go Back to the Ocean

Now, our events move outdoors for the summer, starting with the Scavenger Hunt on Thursday, June 25th at Redondo. Following that are the Beer Dive in July and Wine Dive in August, both at Edmonds Underwater Park, followed by the Crawdad Dive on Lake Washington at Magnuson Park, on Saturday morning, September 26th.

See the SeaHorse Club Calendar for all upcoming events and details.

Hope to see you at one of our upcoming events.