1. Seasonal climate records from Antarctic ice cores for the past 200 years

Dr. T.J. Fudge, UW Earth and Space Sciences

Few direct observations of climate exist in the mid to high Southern Hemisphere latitudes, limiting our understanding of global dynamics due to the importance of the Southern Ocean. Ice cores from Antarctica provide the highest precision proxy records, revealing annual variations that allow reconstruction for hundreds to thousands of years. This project will focus on developing seasonal records of Antarctic precipitation/accumulation through high precision dating of existing ice cores. The summer and winter accumulation records will be validated by comparison to the high-quality period (1979 and later) of reananlysis (ERA5). The ice cores will primarily be from high accumulation areas of West Antarctica which allow the highest precision in the proxy records. Temperature reconstruction using water isotopes will also be possible. The seasonal records should allow greater insight into patterns of atmospheric circulation that drive Southern Hemisphere climate.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Interest in scientific programming (Python or Matlab) and climate data

Work location: UW campus

2. Climate change impacts on farmed oysters

Dr. Craig Norrie, UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

This project offers a hands-on opportunity to explore how climate change is affecting oysters in Puget Sound by combining fieldwork, laboratory experiments, and data analysis. The student will be working on a project that is seeking to understand how climate change impacts farmed oysters. There will be the opportunity to participate in several aspects of this work depending on interests and skills. These may include preparing samples for microbiome and microbial genetic sequencing work to understand how oyster-associated microbes shift with changing water conditions and how these shifts might influence oyster health, carrying out laboratory experiments that explore how ocean acidification affects marine biofilms, and investigating how those biofilms may influence oyster survival and settlement.

There may also be opportunities to become familiar with the operation of the laboratory system and to help carry out experiments that alter water conditions to reflect the stresses oysters may face under climate change. In addition, there may be opportunities to understand how environmental conditions affect oyster behaviour through the development and deployment of gape sensors that record the opening and closing of individual oysters.

There will also be the opportunity to join field visits to commercial oyster farms throughout Puget Sound, offering first-hand experience with aquaculture practices and the chance to speak with growers about the challenges they face. There may also be chances to explore how patterns seen in the field relate to results from the laboratory experiments, offering a fuller picture of how oysters respond to changing conditions.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: A willingness to learn new skills, work carefully in the laboratory, and engage in outdoor fieldwork. Field visits may involve being on uneven ground and in varied weather, but activities can be adapted to ensure full accessibility for students with different physical abilities.
• Preferred: A basic foundation in R or an interest in learning, an interest in marine science, and comfort asking questions and trying new tasks in both field and laboratory settings.

Work location: UW campus and field locations

3. Building a national database of species recovery needs on private lands

Dr. Sunny Jardine, UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs

The United States protects more than 1,600 species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), yet many of these species live on, or depend on actions taken on, privately owned lands. This raises an important question: How much does successful biodiversity recovery in the U.S. depend on private landowners? This project will build the first nationwide, species-level database linking where listed species occur, what actions their recovery plans call for, and whether those actions must happen on private land.

As a research assistant, you will play a central role in creating this database. You will collect, organize, and code information from official U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and NOAA sources, including species range maps, critical habitat shapefiles, and recovery plans. Working with GIS tools (ArcGIS Pro or QGIS) and data-analysis software (R or Python), you will help combine species maps with national land-ownership data to identify which species rely most heavily on private lands. You will also read and summarize recovery plans to classify the types of actions required—such as habitat restoration, changes in agricultural practices, forest management, or removal of barriers like road culverts.

By the end of the summer, you will have helped assemble a unique, high-impact national dataset that will support publishable research on biodiversity conservation, public-good provision, and environmental policy. This is an ideal opportunity for students interested in ecology, data science, GIS, environmental policy, or social-environmental systems. Training will be provided; curiosity and attention to detail are the most important qualifications.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Basic skill in either R or ArcGis

Work location: UW campus

4. Decoding ribosomal DNA diversity in phytoplankton: linking genomic architecture to ecological adaptation

Dr. David Wiener, UW School of Oceanography

Marine eukaryotic phytoplankton are central primary producers that sustain oceanic food webs and drive global biogeochemical cycles. Despite their ecological importance, the genomic and molecular foundations of their cellular physiology remain poorly understood. The ribosome, the core machinery for protein synthesis, is composed of multiple proteins and, in eukaryotes, four ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs). These rRNAs are encoded in ribosomal DNA (rDNA) clusters that vary widely in copy number, enabling cells to meet protein synthesis demands by producing sufficient ribosomes. While eukaryotic species range from ~100 rDNA copies in yeast to ~600 in humans, rDNA organization and variability in marine eukaryotes remain largely unexplored. Previous studies have provided only coarse estimates of rDNA copy number in a limited number of phytoplankton species, lacking nucleotide-level resolution and thus obscuring rRNA sequence diversity, evolutionary dynamics, and processing mechanisms. In this project, we will adapt a Nanopore sequencing approach to quantify both rDNA copy number and sequence variation in a laboratory model phytoplankton. Experimentally, the student will establish and maintain cultures and calibrate the sequencing protocol. Computationally, the student will develop and validate an analytic pipeline for rDNA characterization. Overall, this project integrates experimental and computational approaches to uncover the molecular basis of ribosomal diversity and its role in phytoplankton ecological adaptation.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Basic coding skills – preferred, with the goal of learning laboratory techniques
• Preferred: Basic pipetting skills – preferred, with the goal of learning coding and data analysis.

Work location: UW campus

5. Sockeye salmon ecosystem research in Bristol Bay, Alaska

Dr. Daniel Schindler, Jackie Carter, & Chris Boatright, UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

The Alaska Salmon Program has been studying anadromous salmon and their ecosystems in Alaska since 1946. The student will join our team in Bristol Bay, Alaska, primarily at our Lake Aleknagik field station, where they will be an integral part of our research program. For 9 weeks, they will be fully immersed in collecting field data to add to our 70+ years of data. A typical day of field work may include spending a few hours on a small boat doing limnology sampling (zooplankon hauls, temperature-depth profiles, water clarity, chlorophyll-a sampling), sampling the near-shore habitat with a beach seine for juvenile sockeye and their competitors, collecting outmigrating sockeye smolt with a fyke net, or hiking up a stream counting spawning sockeye salmon and collecting otoliths from carcasses. Lab work will include measuring fish, collecting genetics samples, and identifying and enumerating zooplankton. The student will not only gain hands on experience with ecological data collection in the field, they will also have the opportunity to engage with research scientists and commercial fishery managers who are working in real time to predict sockeye returns and make fishery management decisions. In addition to supporting our long term datasets, the student will have the opportunity to complete an independent research project tailored to their specific interests and skills, offering invaluable experience in research design, implementation, analysis, and write-up/presentation. This independent project is what they will present as their final project.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Interest in broad ecology, fishery management, or impacts of climate change on freshwater systems, and field work
• Required: Excited and able to spend 9 weeks in remote Alaska with limited access to modern amenities
• Preferred: Some experience with field work and coursework in general biology, ecology, and basic statistics, Excel and/or R will be helpful, but not required

Work location: Remote field station in Bristol Bay, Alaska

6. Mind the gap: using mitogenomes to fill in missing organismal references

Dr. Sean McAllister & Shannon Brown, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

Modern ecosystem monitoring using DNA-based methods requires a database of accurately identified genetic reference sequences. Unfortunately, for many small or overlooked marine organisms, those references are missing, even up through the family level. This leaves large gaps in our monitoring network for many ecologically important species. To combat these issues, the Ocean Molecular Ecology (OME) group has been sequencing the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenomes) of benthic and pelagic invertebrates. These sequences serve as high-quality “reference standards” that researchers around the world can use. So far, OME has sequenced over 300 organisms, but there’s still more work to be done.

For this project, a CICOES intern will work with OME to learn how to process DNA sequencing data (bioinformatics) and turn it into useful, published reference sequences. This includes: 1) Reconstructing the complete mitogenome from short DNA sequence reads; 2) Identifying all genes on the mitogenome (annotation); 3) Building phylogenetic trees to confirm the species identity; 4) Preparing data for submission to public databases; and 5) Assisting in background research and preparation of manuscript(s). In addition, though not the main objective, there will be opportunities to gain basic molecular skills in the wet lab (e.g., pipetting, DNA extraction and quantification). This internship is a great chance to learn modern bioinformatics tools, contribute to cutting-edge marine research, and support the development of a scalable, DNA-based ocean monitoring network.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Interest in learning bioinformatic approaches for DNA sequence assembly and annotation
• Preferred: Experience in biological data organization and basic analyses
• Preferred: Coursework in marine sciences, oceanography, and/or biology

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

7. Leveraging new technologies to estimate multi-species pinniped abundance and forecast changes to spatial distribution

Dr. Sarah Chinn & Dr. Peter Mahoney, NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Marine Mammal Laboratory

The AFSC conducts research to determine the status and population sizes of West Coast pinniped species including California sea lions, harbor seals, northern fur seals, Steller sea lions, and northern elephant seals. We estimate abundance from digital photographs acquired via aerial surveys (fixed-wing and UAS) for population models that inform stock assessments that are used for management and conservation. This work has been initiated, namely with an established annotated (i.e., labeled) dataset used to train computer vision (i.e., artificial intelligence or machine learning) models to detect and recognize individual pinnipeds by age class and species. Intern responsibilities will include continuing to work with existing photo databases to: filter raw images by quality and sort by location; create photo mosaics of study areas; filter the images by identifying the presence of pinnipeds in each photo/mosaic; classify individuals by species, sex, and age class for a total count of individuals (i.e., annotations); check the quality of previously annotated photographs/mosaics; train object detection and segmentation models with newly annotated data specific for species of interest; and validate the efficacy of model outputs. If the intern is not familiar with these types of programs listed in the skills and requirements, enthusiasm to learn can often be just as good as previous knowledge. After training with the mentor, the intern should be able to independently distinguish the 6 different species of pinnipeds found on the west coast as well as identify individuals by age and sex class.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Interest in leveraging ML and AI tools to modernize data analysis and workflows for marine mammal population assessments
• Required: Good communication, detail-oriented, and willingness to sort through large image datasets to find cryptic/small animals for many hours at a desk using a computer
• Preferred: Basic knowledge of photo processing programs (e.g., Adobe Photoshop, WebODM, HugIn), database management (e.g., MS Access, MS Excel, GitHub), and GIS (e.g., ArcPro)
• Preferred: Familiarity with ML/AI and object detection models is a plus.

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

8. Caught on camera: quantifying disturbance and recovery of endangered Steller sea lions from remote camera imagery

Molly McCormley (CICOES) & Dr. Brian Fadely (NOAA), UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies & NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Assessing the population status and health of endangered Steller sea lions in Alaska requires researchers to enter rookeries and haulouts, inadvertently causing disturbance to the animals. While efforts are made to minimize these impacts, it is logistically challenging to monitor animal behavior and any residual impacts once researchers depart. Since 2012, the NMFS Marine Mammal Laboratory has utilized remote cameras at six western Aleutian Island rookeries to collect year-round data. These images are essential for identifying individuals, estimating survival rates, and quantifying movements. Ironically, maintaining these cameras and marking individuals also causes seasonal disturbance. Our objective is to quantify these effects by using existing camera imagery to analyze how human presence alters sea lion behavior and to measure the subsequent recovery period following human departure. Because these sites are remote and human presence is limited to only a few days annually, we can isolate and analyze specific disturbance events from 2012 to the present. To this end, the intern will look through imagery on days with known human presence for all sites observing changes in Steller sea lion behavior to record distinct periods of disturbance and recovery. During their tenure, they will be an integral part of our team working in spaces with other NOAA marine mammal scientists. This research is essential for evaluating our own impact on this endangered species and offers a unique opportunity to study recovery dynamics through a non-invasive lens (literally!).

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Familiarity with Microsoft Office Suite and Google Workspace, good oral and written communication skills, detail oriented
• Preferred: Interest in pursuing a career in wildlife biology (research, policy, etc.)

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

9. Is timing everything? Examining how migration timing and seasonal changes in ocean conditions interact to influence marine survival of Chinook salmon

Dr. Eve Pugsley, Dr. Jennifer Gosselin, & Dr. Lisa Crozier, Columbia Basin Research, UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, & NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center

Juvenile salmon from the Columbia River Basin face many challenges during their first several weeks in the ocean. As they migrate from the river mouth up the Washington coast, they must find food and avoid predators. Less than 5% of juvenile salmon that enter the ocean survive to return and spawn, and understanding which factors influence ocean survival is critical for predicting and improving outcomes for threatened populations. Previous work has shown that both the timing of juvenile ocean entry and the timing of seasonal changes in ocean conditions influence survival.

This project focuses on the interacting influences of migration timing and seasonal oceanographic changes, and will entail working on the computer to perform analysis of large datasets by coding in Python and R. Tiny identification tags implanted in juvenile fish called Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags allow us to monitor migration timing and survival of individual fish. The intern, with guidance from the mentorship team, will work to generate a dataset of predicted ocean conditions (nutrients, productivity, water masses, habitat compression) encountered by individual PIT-tagged juvenile Chinook salmon, using migration timing observations and hindcast output from regional ocean models. Data visualization and statistical analysis of this dataset will examine relationships between migration timing, interannual oceanographic variability, ocean conditions encountered by individual fish and survival outcomes. The intern will work in a collaborative environment to strengthen their data analysis/visualization and science communication skills, receive career development support tailored to their interests, and learn about ongoing projects in our research group.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Prior data analysis experience in R, Python, MATLAB or another programming language, and enthusiasm to develop scientific programming skills
• Required: Familiarity with statistics equivalent to an introductory statistics or data analysis course
• Required: Avid interest and preferably coursework in at least one of the following: oceanography, fisheries science, aquatic ecology, or a related discipline

Work location: Columbia Basin Research (downtown Seattle) with weekly or biweekly trips to NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center (near UW campus)

10. Evaporation and sublimation on Archean Earth: understanding the beginnings of complex life

Dr. Aditya Khuller, UW Applied Physics Laboratory

The Archean eon, spanning about one-third of Earth’s history (from 2.5 to 4 billion years ago) is important to understand our planet’s evolution and also Earth-like exoplanets. Its two most distinguishing features are the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere, and no macroscopic multicellular life. However, complex life is thought to have begun at this stage. We will use an existing, validated atmospheric model to understand how evaporation and sublimation of water and ice took place across Archean Earth. Our results will help us understand how complex life began to evolve on Earth.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Experience coding in Matlab or willingness to learn

Work location: UW campus

11. Continuation of the development an interactive Shiny App for at-sea distributions and densities of marine mammals

Stacie Koslovsky & Paul Conn, NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Understanding distributions and densities of marine mammals is a high priority for NOAA Fisheries, including the timing and location of marine mammal distribution, migrations, density in local areas, and movements to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on protected species. While this information is challenging to provide, there are disparate datasets that can be combined to provide more refined estimates of seasonal densities and to provide managers with the best scientific information available. We seek an intern to continue the development of a web application where species density maps can be viewed and downloaded by stakeholders.

The intern will work closely with program staff to continue to develop the code base and application using R and GitHub, including adding new data products to the existing application, optimizing the existing code base, completing updates to the application, and expanding documentation. The intern will be provided with oversight and the data products to be used for developing the application, but the remainder of the code development will be conducted by the selected intern with regular feedback and testing from program staff. The intern will participate in regular coworking sessions with the mentors and will conduct several informational interviews with program staff during the internship for their professional development. At the beginning of the internship, the intern will be given 2-3 milestones to meet during their internship; when each of those milestones is reached, a code review will be conducted and feedback will be provided.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Experience using R and RStudio
• Required: Interest in developing code for interactive apps to convey research to the public
• Required: Familiarity with spatial data, strong attention to detail

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW’s campus)

12. Internal wave dynamics on the Washington coast

Dr. Walter Torres, UW Applied Physics Laboratory

Beneath the familiar surface waves breaking at the beach, much larger and slower-moving internal waves travel through the ocean’s interior. As internal waves propagate over the continental shelf, their amplitude can increase to the point that they can break (underwater!). Internal waves can therefore play a vital role in transporting heat, oxygen, and larvae to and from the coastline. The structure and movement of internal waves can be influenced by the internal tide, and also ocean stratification, the layering of water of different densities, which depends on seasonally-varying temperature and salinity fields. Internal waves are common on the Washington coast, but we are still understanding how and why they manifest in different forms, such as internal solitary waves and nonlinear large amplitude (50 m) bores.

As an intern, you will work alongside oceanographers from the University of Washington to analyze a rich real-world dataset collected from a network of moorings and sensors curated by the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) over many years. Your work can involve time-series analysis, statistical techniques, data visualization, and even numerical modeling to explore how ocean conditions affect the generation, propagation, and dissipation of internal waves.

This opportunity is ideal for students eager to apply and expand their skills in programming, mathematics, and physics while exploring oceanographic data. No prior experience in oceanography is required — just curiosity, a strong background in science, and a willingness to learn.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Coursework in calculus and physics
• Preferred: Experience with Python or other programming languages (Julia, Matlab, R, etc.)

Work location: UW campus

13. Bio-physical coupling of zooplankton in the Gulf of Alaska

Dr. John Horne and Mark Yamane, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies & UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

How can aquatic ecosystems be autonomously sampled, and how do species compositions and distributions respond to changing environmental conditions? This two-part question forms the crux of this project. We are developing ecosystem sampling capability for underwater gliders to quantify biological distributions in dynamic aquatic environments. We have integrated active acoustic, environmental, and optical autonomous sampling packages on a Slocum underwater glider to provide near-real-time data summaries over long deployment times.

There are three primary goals for this internship: develop an interactive web application to display historical and current glider acoustic and optic data to characterize biological distributions over space and time; annotate zooplankton optical images to build classification libraries; and conduct four-dimensional spatiotemporal analyses of fish and zooplankton distributions across the Gulf of Alaska continental shelf.

Experience in Python programming, web development, and zooplankton taxonomy is helpful, but we don’t expect the intern to have all three areas of expertise and will adapt the project to take advantage of existing skills and provide opportunities to learn new ones.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Python programming, attention to detail
• Preferred: Website development, zooplankton taxonomy

Work location: UW campus

14. Methane cycling in rivers, estuaries, and coastal margin

Dr. David Butterfield & Dr. Guang-Sin Lu, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and one that humans might possibly be able to reduce in concentration with the right efforts. Understanding natural sources of methane is important for modeling the atmospheric methane budget. How do rivers and wetlands around Puget Sound and other estuaries contribute to atmospheric methane? What happens to dissolved methane in rivers when river water and salt water mix? What are the major sources of dissolved methane in Puget Sound waters, and what are the relative contributions from agriculture, wetlands, seafloor sources, and wastewater outfalls?

Measuring dissolved methane in water can contribute to answering these questions. For this internship, we propose to involve a student in sampling surface water from rivers and near-shore areas of Puget Sound. Using kayaks, gas-tight samples will be taken with syringes, brought back to the lab and analyzed by gas chromatography. The student intern will participate in creating the sampling plan, writing a safety plan and collecting samples, analyzing methane concentration, and analyzing the resulting surface water data. Additional data from previous ship-based sampling is available for data analysis to evaluate deeper sources of methane in Puget Sound.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Completion of general chemistry or chemical oceanography coursework
• Preferred: Chemistry lab experience; experience kayaking in rivers or lakes (flat water); experience with “Surfer” data analysis software, or other 2D mapping and modeling software.

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

15. Atmosphere and ocean variability of the New England Shelf northern recirculation gyre captured by a new enhanced coastal weather buoy

Dr. Yolande Serra & Dr. Meghan Cronin, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies & NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Be the first to explore this new moored buoy dataset from the New England Shelf. The mooring was deployed in May of 2025 and is scheduled to be recovered in the spring of 2026, so these data are truly “hot off the press”! The New England Shelf is home to a highly productive marine ecosystem and serves as the transition zone where coastal waters mix with the deep ocean through complex processes along the shelf. The region is characterized by a northern recirculation gyre (NRG) running counter to the strong western boundary current known as the Gulf Stream that separates from the US East Coast near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, south of our mooring location. The enhanced operational National Data Buoy Center Coastal Weather Buoy measures collocated subsurface and surface physical variables that capture the full heat and momentum fluxes and subsurface ocean heat content and mixed layer variability within the NRG. Studies suggest that the NRG and Gulf Stream separation at Cape Hatteras are strongly coupled to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and deep western boundary current. Related sea surface temperature fronts along the northern edge of the Gulf Stream in turn create conditions for some of the strongest ocean forcing of the atmosphere on the mesoscale. The student on this project will compare the newly collected data to a recent 9-year intensive study of the New England shelf as part of the National Science Foundation Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) Coastal Pioneer Array, deployed from 2013-2022.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Basic programming in Python, Matlab, or equivalent; good written communications; basic statistics
• Preferred: Understanding of differential equations

Work location: UW campus

16. Scientific data management application UI/UX development

Eugene Burger, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

The Science Data Integration Group (SDIG) and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) specialize in development processes to accept, manage and disseminate data from a large variety of ocean observing platforms. Observing platforms vary from underwater tethered platforms, moored deep-ocean observing platforms, and robotic undersea and surface platforms. The management of these data workflows require applications for workflow management, data acceptance monitoring, and interfaces that provide data users with a data discovery and data selection interface. These applications are used both internally, and across NOAA and internationally by research collaborators. Most of the applications are developed using the Dash framework and the Plotly Enterprise libraries for data visualizations.

Some of these interfaces are established, while some are being developed. The intern will review the graphical user interfaces of existing and new interfaces for usability. The intern will also consider the aesthetics of the interfaces to ensure the design draws in users. The intern will work closely with developers at PMEL, and they may also perform user testing to guide improvement to the applications’ user experience. To accomplish the web interfaces, and the user decisions required by the applications to generate the visualizations and other tailored output, the intern will engage with the SDIG developers to ensure the UI layout is optimized through the adjustment and development of cascading style sheet definitions.

The deliverable will be a report of improvement, and the mockups of user interface that can be rendered using the Plotly Dash Enterprise framework and libraries.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Coursework in computer science, oceanography, meteorology, or related
• Required: Coursework or experience in software design, UI/UX design background, and CSS
• Required: Experience in at least two of these programming languages: Java, Python, C, Fortran
• Preferred: Coursework or experience in scientific data visualization

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

17. Characterizing aggregations of salmon prey driven by oceanographic processes

Jonathan McLean & Dr. Shelley Johnson, USGS Western Fisheries Research Center

Chinook salmon marine survival is declining in the Salish Sea, prompting the need to understand the causes of these declines. Larger body size of Juvenile Chinook salmon at the end of their first growing season (late-July) in marine waters is linked with higher odds of marine survival. To achieve this growth, Juvenile Chinook salmon feed on zooplankton, specifically crab larvae. Observed ambient crab densities are not high enough for salmon to forage effectively, prompting the need to understand how prey is potentially concentrated by oceanographic processes. Oceanographic tidal fronts that form near river mouths may gather zooplankton into profitable prey patches that juvenile salmon use to forage. Given the importance of the tidal cycle in the formation of these fronts, we will sample oceanographic tidal fronts at peak ebb tide and slack tide using plankton nets to understand how tides may aggregate zooplankton. Additionally, we will analyze zooplankton samples at our lab to understand the salmon prey field in fronts and in ambient sites. Crab larvae will be identified, counted, and weighed. If time and interest allow, the intern could taxonomically identify other marine invertebrates and perform basic statistical analyses to compare fronts and ambient sites.

Salmon behavior in marine environments remains poorly understood, making it essential to investigate how oceanographic processes influence the distribution and availability of their prey. Accurately characterizing prey availability enables us to create more informative growth models to better understand how Chinook salmon forage and grow.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Comfort on boats, interest in zooplankton sampling, experience with basic statistics and coding in R

Work location: USGS Western Fisheries Research Center (3 miles from UW campus) and fieldwork locations around Seattle

18. Evaluating air-sea fluxes from a “direct” covariance method using high-frequency data from a moored buoy in the North Pacific

Dr. Meghan Cronin & Dr. Dongxiao Zhang, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory & UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

The ocean and atmosphere interact through air-sea fluxes. Turbulent air-sea fluxes of momentum (wind stress) drive the ocean gyres and set up the upper ocean current structure. Turbulent air-sea latent and sensible heat fluxes are the primary means by which the ocean forces the atmosphere. For most observational and numerical (e.g., coupled model) applications, turbulent air-sea fluxes are estimated from state variables using bulk algorithms. This project will create one of the very few open-ocean time series of directly measured turbulent fluxes using the eddy covariance method.

The Ocean Climate Stations (OCS) group of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) has maintained two heavily instrumented moored buoys in the North Pacific for about two decades (see http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/OCS). In 2025, in collaboration with Dr. Jim Edson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the OCS buoy at Station Papa in the northeast Pacific was enhanced with a “Direct Covariance Flux System” that measures air-sea fluxes from covarying high-frequency fluctuations in vertical motions and other meteorological properties (e.g., horizontal winds, temperature). The student will evaluate these “directly measured” air-sea fluxes in comparison to estimates of “bulk” air-sea fluxes computed from state variables (wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, sea surface temperature). Differences between the two flux estimates will be analyzed in terms of errors in the bulk algorithm, errors in the measurements, and flow distortion associated with the setup. The student will summarize this analysis in a report that could lead to a peer-reviewed publication.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Coursework in Mathematics and Physics, experience using scientific scripting and visualization computer languages
• Preferred: Knowledge of MATLAB or Python

Work location: NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

19. Wetland ponds as indicators of geomorphic process and ocean health

Dr. Kendall Valentine & Kendall Fontenot, UW School of Oceanography

Wetlands are critically important habitats, as they provide storm surge protection, increase water quality, provide habitat, host recreational activities, and are an important cultural resource. Marshes exist on the periphery of our oceans, buffering the connection between land, ocean, and people. Although marshes are critically important and exist on all continents except Antarctica, they are disappearing at an alarming rate. An estimated 20-25% of marshes have been lost globally. While the causes and mechanisms of marsh loss are varied, a common indicator of the collapse of a marsh system is the formation and expansion of ponds. Either understanding the mechanism for ponding, or finding early indicators of it, can help inform restoration and protection practices. In this project, the intern would use remote sensing and machine learning techniques to extract and map ponds in salt marshes globally and perform field validation of some Washington wetland systems. Once the ponds are mapped, the characteristics will be used to identify the dominant geomorphic process that is driving the formation of ponds. Understanding how marshes pond and then collapse is critical; billions of dollars go into maladaptation, leading to distrust of science and worse decisions in the future. Identifying mechanisms of marsh loss will allow us to make better use of adaptation money and make more informed decisions.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Experience with remote sensing or machine learning

Work location: UW campus

20. Projecting end-of-year catch

Dr. Lee Cronin-Fine, NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Sustainable fisheries management relies on accurate data. Every year, NOAA scientists conduct stock assessments to set the Overfishing Limits (OFL) and Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) for the upcoming year. However, there is a timing challenge: these assessments are finalized in October, but the fishing season continues through December. To determine the total annual catch, scientists must “predict” the remaining two months of activity. Currently, different fisheries use different shortcuts—for example, the Alaska Plaice fishery uses a simple three-week average to fill the gap. Is this the most accurate method? This project will evaluate several predictive methodologies across multiple flatfish species (Alaska Plaice, Greenland Turbot, and Flathead Sole) to determine which models best minimize uncertainty and ensure the long-term health of North Pacific ecosystems.

9-Week Research Scaffold:
• Weeks 1–2: Data Discovery — Access and clean NOAA datasets, extracting historical “October snapshots” versus final year-end totals.
• Weeks 3–6: Model Development — Using R, apply predictive methods—such as moving averages, seasonal trends, or historical proportions—to the catch data.
• Weeks 7–9: Synthesis & Recommendation — Perform a “hindcast” analysis, comparing predictions against actual historical totals to identify the most robust method.

Impact:
This project addresses a direct operational need. The intern’s findings will help assessment authors choose more accurate prediction methods, directly contributing to the sustainable management of North Pacific groundfish. The summer will culminate in a formal recommendation and a final presentation.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Basic skill in R and statistical modeling

Work location:NOAA’s Western Regional Center (4 miles from UW campus)

21. Influence of artificial light at night (ALAN) on juvenile salmon

Dr. Shelley Johnson & Tessa Code, USGS Western Fisheries Research Center

This project will support a broader effort to understand the ecological impacts of artificial light at night (ALAN) in urban aquatic environments, with specific focus on predator-prey interactions. Juvenile salmon and their predators primarily rely on vision to hunt, so understanding how the underwater visual environment affects a predator’s ability to detect and capture prey can provide important insights into how light and turbidity influence temporal-spatial dynamics (and trade-offs) in foraging and predation risk for juvenile salmon. In recent years, our group has been mapping and quantifying ALAN in Lake Washington and conducting laboratory experiments to understand how ALAN shapes predation risk for juvenile salmon during their freshwater rearing and outmigration. Through this project, the intern will help build on this research by participating in fieldwork (e.g., direct fish and zooplankton sampling; hydroacoustic surveys) and/or laboratory experiments (e.g., reaction distance and functional response experiments) to measure responses by predators and the prey fish community to these visual dynamics.

Understanding the influence of the visual environment on predator-prey interactions can add a valuable new dimension to salmon recovery and habitat restoration efforts. By identifying sources of direct light we can develop common sense, one-time remedies that would improve salmon survival throughout the basin.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Comfort on boats, willingness to conduct nocturnal work, experience with basic statistics and coding in R, interest in fish ecology and behavior

Work location: USGS Western Fisheries Research Center (3 miles from UW campus)

22. Adding human expertise in the loop to improve an AI-powered ship-to-cloud pipeline for a fisheries acoustic-trawl survey

Dr. Wu-Jung Lee & Dr. Elizabeth Phillips, UW Applied Physics Laboratory & NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center

The California Current Ecosystem is a highly productive coastal ecosystem in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, where the diverse zooplankton and fish populations support major fisheries along the Pacific coast from California to British Columbia. For more than two decades, surveys conducted by NOAA Fisheries Science Centers have produced a large active acoustics and biological dataset from echosounders and net trawls. These data have enabled scientists to not only track the status of fishery stocks but also investigate the impacts of variable ocean conditions on this ecosystem. Building on this foundation, scientists from the University of Washington and NOAA have developed a near real-time ‘ship-to-cloud’ data pipeline that integrates machine learning (ML) models with physics-based acoustic data interpretation to estimate the biomass of Pacific hake, which supports the largest fishery on the U.S. West Coast outside Alaska. We invite a summer intern to join our team to help set up a human-in-the-loop active learning framework that leverages expert feedback to improve our ML models during the 2026 survey season. The intern will gain hands-on experience working with a near real-time ship-to-cloud data pipeline, identifying and annotating fish and zooplankton aggregations in echograms, and contributing to active learning elements in the pipeline. Through the process, the intern will learn how active acoustics and ML technologies are used in fisheries science and marine ecological research.

Skills and requirements:

• Required: Coursework in basic statistics, interest in developing computational skills for data-intensive science, familiarity with programming in Python
• Preferred: Solid background or interest in marine sciences, fisheries sciences, oceanography, or biology; interest and ability (in particular strong communication skills) to work in a team environment

Work location: UW campus and NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center (near UW campus)

23. ENSO dynamics and Seasonal Forecasting

Dr. Aaron Levine, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has the largest impact on year to year climate variability and provides significant skill for seasonal forecasts (timescales of months). However, there are still significant challenges with ENSO forecasts in seasonal forecast models at leads longer than a few months. This can be related to the way that the forecast models represent the physical processes that lead to an El Niño or La Niña event or on how the models represent tropical weather on shorter timescales (weeks) over the course of their forecast. This project will use our current understanding of ENSO dynamics and the latest seasonal forecast models to explore the challenges in ENSO seasonal forecasting. The project can be customized to the individual student’s interest within the framework of ENSO dynamics or tropical forecasting on timescales of weeks to months (S2S).

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Basic knowledge of programming in Python and statistics/data analysis.

Work location: UW campus

24. Biological sensitivity, resiliency, and adaptation to ocean acidification in marine fish species

Dr. Andrew Dittman, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, & Dr. Andrew Berdahl, UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

The ability of marine organisms to acclimate or adapt to environmental conditions associated with ocean acidification (OA) and other climate-related stressors (rising temperatures, deoxygenation) is a critical uncertainty in the management, conservation and recovery of these species. Species- and population-level differences in sensitivity to elevated CO2 and costressors have been described extensively in a wide variety of organisms but a mechanistic understanding of why these differences exist and how some animals are able to acclimate or adapt to these environmental changes is lacking. Understanding how animals respond to environmental stressors and how we can develop management and adaptation strategies for living marine resources under OA requires knowledge of the mechanisms’ underlying sensitivity and acclimation/adaptation to OA and co-stressors. The overarching goal of this project is to utilize genomic and neurobehavioral approaches to develop a more thorough understanding of the processes underlying these responses in Pacific salmon and sablefish, species that are critical for commercial and recreational fishing, expansion of marine aquaculture, and are species of conservation concern.The specific goals of this internship would be to complete video analysis
from an experiment examining the effects of elevated CO2 levels (OA) on the schooling behavior and predator alarm reactions of different Puget Sound Chinook salmon populations. The successful candidate would work with Northwest Fisheries Science Center scientists (Andrew Dittman) and UW faculty (Andrew Berdahl) as part of a CICOES funded project and would hopefully be a co-author on a peer-reviewed publication generated from this work.

Skills and requirements:

• Preferred: Knowledge of research statistics and basic skills in R or other programming languages.

Work location: UW campus and/or NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center (near UW campus)