Facilities & Resources
Buildings • Molecular Genetics Facility • Field Stations
Research & Teaching Hatchery • Special Collections/Resources
The School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences is housed in several buildings on the University of Washington campus. Laboratories provide facilities for a wide range of studies. Each research laboratory contains specialized apparatus and support equipment for conducting experiments. An extensive collection of fishery records from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska is available at the School, and the School maintains an extensive library of computer programs for processing fisheries data. In addition, the School maintains various facilities off campus, including field research stations in Washington State and Alaska.
Buildings
The School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences is located on the south campus of the University of Washington. Fisheries faculty, staff and students reside in the following buildings.
Fishery Sciences
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Photo by K. Sauberc Univ. Washington 1999 |
Fishery Sciences is the most recent facility to be constructed, and was occupied in the summer of 1999. This state-of-the-art facility is located in the recently expanded southwest campus area, immediately west of the existing Fisheries Teaching and Research and Marine Studies buildings. Fishery Sciences is significant in that it has, for the first time in over 3 decades, brought all members of the School together in contiguous facilities, thereby improving collegiality, communication, and interaction ranging from individual to programmatic levels. Teaching has been showcased in the building design, including a large auditorium and the potential to provide distance learning. In addition, structural elements have been added (e.g., ducts and vents and other systems) that are not needed currently but which, for little cost, can be brought online in the future to serve new faculty and programs.
Fishery Sciences houses most of the School’s faculty, staff, and graduate students, most of whom moved from the old Fisheries Center located in the southeast campus. It contains numerous laboratories, offices, and classrooms. In addition, it houses the Director’s Office, the Business Office, the Student Services Office, the Western Regional Aquaculture Center, the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the Publications Office, and the School Archives.
Marine Studies Building
Fisheries faculty, staff, and students share the Marine Studies Building with the School of Marine Affairs. This building, which was completed in 1983, contains teaching and research facilities specifically developed for research on aquatic food products, including engineering laboratories; a pilot plant; chemistry, microbiology, and biochemistry research laboratories; undergraduate teaching laboratories; walk-in coolers and freezers; and a low-temperature laboratory, as well as offices, classrooms, and other support facilities. The Marine Studies Building is also the site of the SAFS Molecular Genetics Facility.
Fisheries Teaching and Research Building
The Fisheries Teaching and Research building was completed in 1990. It is connected by walkways to the adjacent Marine Studies Building, and houses faculty, staff, and graduate students in laboratory-based disciplines. The Pacific Northwest Regional Fish Collection and its affiliated ichthyological faculty, staff, and students are also housed in the building. Facilities include several new classrooms and teaching laboratories, environmental chambers, and research laboratories.
Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
In addition to faculty and secretarial offices and research laboratory space in Fisheries Center, the Washington Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit has a student laboratory and offices as well as facilities for gear and boat storage in a building located at 1303 NE Boat Street.
Fisheries Center
Fisheries Center continues to support the Fisheries Teaching & Research Hatchery (see following) and its personnel, as well as technical shops and small boat maintenance facilities. As of summer 1999, most of the personnel and facilities in this building will be relocated in the newly constructed Fisheries Center located in the southwest campus.
SAFS Molecular Genetics Facility
The SAFS Molecular Genetics Facility offers faculty, staff, and students the opportunity to carry out research in molecular biology. Located in the Marine Studies Building, the facility became fully operational in1994 and since then has been used for a variety of fisheries research projects involving salmonids, rockfishes, halibut, crabs, sea lions, and sea otters.
The facility also serves as a teaching resource and is the site of a graduate course in molecular techniques. It is well equipped for most types of research in molecular biology, including high-throughput DNA sequencing and genotyping, molecular cloning, and tissue culture. Laboratory facilities include two computerized, laser-based fluorescent imaging systems for DNA sequencing and other forms of genetic analysis, 96- and 384-well thermal cyclers, and other ancillary equipment.
Field Stations
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The School's Big Beef Creek research station, located on Hood Canal, Washington, provides opportunities to conducted research on aquatic species at a facility that encompasses the spectrum from freshwater to marine environments. (Photo by A. Hendry) |
The School maintains six field stations in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska. Two field camps are located at Lake Iliamna (Iliamna, Porcupine Island), one at Chignik Lake, and three on the Wood River Lakes (Aleknagik, Nerka, Kulik). Each field station features cabins, boats, laboratory space, and equipment to support research activities. The stations are occupied primarily during summer months in support of various types of studies on salmon. See the Alaska Salmon Program for further information (additional information for each of the three major sites may be obtained at the UW Office of Research Field Stations site.
Closer to home, the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences also maintains a field station in Washington at Big Beef Creek on Hood Canal. This station has a native salmon stream plus abundant well water, pristine tidelands, and access to seawater in Hood Canal. Laboratory and housing facilities are available to researchers.
A small shellfish research laboratory on Puget Sound at Manchester, Washington, is located in facilities provided by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The School is conducting studies on oysters, clams, and mussels to provide information and assistance to the rapidly developing shellfish aquaculture industry in the Pacific Northwest.
Research & Teaching Hatchery
Among the most recognized features of the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences are the salmon return pond located just south of the Fisheries Center and the large outdoor raceways containing large rainbow trout. Many students, alumni, and visitors to the school have learned about salmon and trout by observing and participating in the events that occur at the School's Research & Teaching Hatchery each year. In the late fall, adult chinook and coho salmon return to the pond complete their life cycle and replenish the natural living resource that is an integral part of the research and teaching programs within the school and the university. During this time, fisheries students enrolled in a course on fish reproduction strip eggs and milt from the returning fish, fertilize the eggs, and place them in incubators to develop and hatch. Other students are busy explaining the salmon reproduction and the importance of good water quality to about 300 public school students per day who visit the pond and are involved in a "Salmon in the Classroom" program sponsored by the Seattle Public Utility Department. In the spring, thousands of small salmon are released to begin the cycle again for the next generation.
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The hatchery also is home to the famed "Donaldson" rainbow trout, a rapidly growing strain of fish developed by Professor Emeritus Lauren Donaldson through many years of selective breeding studies conducted at the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences. In addition to being an invaluable resource to enhance teaching and research within the school, offspring from these fish are raised in numerous locations around the world. This unique educational facility serves to connect the lessons learned in the classroom with handling living aquatic organisms.
Special Collections & Resources
Fisheries-Oceanography Library
A branch of the University’s library system, the Fisheries-Oceanography Library is one of the finest fisheries libraries in the United States. Its collection of materials in fisheries, food science, and oceanography consists of more than 60,000 bound volumes. The library provides access to a wide range of electronic information retrieval resources. The library currently receives more than 1,100 serial publications.
University of Washington Fish Collection
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The UW Fish Collection contains the largest number of juvenile and adult fish specimens on the West Coast. (Photo by K. Adkins.) |
The School's Fish Collection maintains an extensive collection of preserved fishes, one of five major permanent facilities on the West Coast, but by far the largest in terms of number of specimens. Presently, the collection contains more than 230,000 juvenile and adult specimens, and well over 3.3 million eggs and larvae, representing about 3,778 species in 1,419 genera and 310 families. About 25% of the material consists of freshwater species, primarily from Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. The remainder are marine fishes and invertebrates collected mainly in the eastern North Pacific Ocean, from the Aleutian Islands to Baja California, and in the western tropical Pacific, from Christmas Island to Guam and the Philippines. Curators of the collection make specimens available upon request to researchers within and outside the School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, and provide ichthyological information to the public. In early 1990, the Fish Collection moved from Fisheries Center to space specifically designed for it in the Fisheries Teaching and Research Building.
Fisheries Archives
The School Archives contains records pertaining to research conducted by School personnel, including data, reports and technical papers, proceedings, reprints of peer-review publications, maps, field logs and journals, and photographs and film. While some of the archive holdings are duplicative of those housed in the Fisheries—Oceanography Library and the UW Archives, much of the content is unique and thus available only at this archives facility. Additional holdings pertaining to both research, teaching, and administrative activities of the School are retained at the UW Archives.
