5/2 Zoanthid, wildfire season, Laura Blackmore, grey whale migration, invasives, chinook season, oil reserves

Yellow zoanthid [Jim Nestler/Walla Walla U]

Yellow zoanthid Epizoanthus scotinus
This anemone-like cnidarian lives in groups, with individuals connected to one another at the base by a sheet of tissue to make a clonal colony.  The column of individuals may have embedded sand or other material.  Subtidal.  Color tan, light yellow, or brown, with light yellow or white tentacles (paler than the column).  Height to about 5 cm, diameter to about 2 cm.  Colony may be 1-2 m wide. These individuals reproduce asexually by budding, thus adding to the colony.  They can also reproduce sexually.  These animals may take several hours to expand again if they are stimulated to contract. (Walla Walla University)

Forecast calls for busy wildfire season along West Coast
Most of the country can expect a normal wildfire season but residents along the West Coast of the United States should be ready for another busy season, the National Interagency Fire Center said Wednesday. California experienced its deadliest and largest wildfires in the past two years, including a fire in the northern part of the state last year that destroyed the town of Paradise, killing more than 80 people. It was the nation's worst death toll from a wildfire in a century. The Boise, Idaho-based center said a heavy crop of grasses and fine fuels has developed across California and should elevate fire potential as it dries through the summer. Nicholas Geranios reports. (Associated Press)

Gov. Inslee appoints new executive director of Puget Sound Partnership
Governor Jay Inslee appointed a new executive director to the Puget Sound Partnership on Wednesday. Laura Blackmore has been with the Puget Sound Partnership since 2015, and currently holds the title of deputy director and tribal liaison. Blackmore worked for Cascadia Consulting, Inc. prior to her time at the Partnership, and also has experience as a water quality planner for the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks.... Blackmore’s appointment begins Saturday, May 4.  Emily Oliver reports. (KLXY)

Dozens of grey whales washing up dead along migration route — and B.C. is their next stop
An unusually high number of grey whales are washing up dead on West Coast shorelines on their annual migration north and B.C. is the next stop, warns a U.S.-based marine biologist. More than 20 grey whales were stranded ashore in California this spring, and, further north along the coast in Oregon, several more have washed up recently. Eleven whales were recently stranded in Washington state. Only one survived. Clare Hennig reports. (CBC)

As Global Shipping Grows, Prepare for a Surge of Invasive Species
Invasive species have long spread across the world by ship, often with disastrous effects. Now Anthony Sardain, an invasion ecologist at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, expects the risk of marine invasions to rise three- to 20-fold in the next 30 years. The idea came to Sardain in the summer of 2015 as he sailed with his father, a commodity market analyst, off the coast of Brittany, France. As they discussed how China’s emergence as a superpower might impact global trade, Sardain realized that previous research on marine invasive species typically assumed global trade would remain constant. But shipping is expected to change on a global scale. Sardain and his colleagues set out to forecast how this might affect where marine species are being introduced. Charles Q. Choi reports. (Hakai Magazine)

'This is all optical': sport fishers slam DFO's chinook closures
Recreational fishers are criticizing Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for its sweeping restrictions on chinook salmon fishing, claiming that less than one per cent of the chinook caught last year by sport anglers throughout the region belonged to at-risk stocks. More than 100 protesters surrounded federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson's constituency office in North Vancouver on Wednesday calling the recent closures a political move that will have little impact on the overall health of chinook populations. (CBC)

It's hard to know how much oil we have left, but this is our best guess
The pockets of oil trapped between Earth’s strata are finite, at least on a human time scale. It takes millennia of immense pressure and heat to transform ancient remains into fossil fuels. Economists and geologists are still ­debating when, whether, and how we’ll run out­—the answer is a ­moving target. In the meantime, here’s our best guess as to how much of Earth’s milkshake we’ve got left to drink. Jennifer Lu reports. (Popular Science)


Now, your tug weather--
West Entrance U.S. Waters Strait Of Juan De Fuca-  618 AM PDT Thu May 2 2019   
TODAY  W wind 5 to 15 kt. Wind waves 2 ft or less. W swell 4 ft  at 7 seconds. 
TONIGHT  W wind 5 to 15 kt becoming to 10 kt after midnight.  Wind waves 2 ft or less. W swell 4 ft at 11 seconds.

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