The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August a five-year, $1.3 million grant to start working on the forecasts. The new early warning system will transition to operation starting in 2017.

Once up and running, the forecasts will help coastal communities from Neah Bay, Washington, to Newport, Oregon, target their shellfish monitoring and fine-tune decisions about closing beaches to shellfish harvesting to have more advance warning and potentially avoid some beach closures.

鈥淭his will be a sort of weather forecast for Pacific Northwest harmful algal blooms,鈥� said , a 91探花professor of oceanography and member of the .

Forecasts will be produced by the UW’s model, which creates three-day forecasts for Washington and Oregon coastal waters. The model provides results for open-ocean beaches as well as complex protected waterways 鈥� including Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor 鈥� that are home to many of the region’s shellfish beds.

Up-to-date monitoring of offshore conditions will be provided by Vera Trainer, a biologist at NOAA鈥檚 , and members of the Makah Tribe. Starting this spring, they will collect samples by ship every two weeks in an eddy near the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which has been as a source of toxin-producing algae that can reach local beaches. The team will then analyze water samples within a day at the Makah Tribal lab in Neah Bay.

The new collaboration “will bring the most powerful technologies for cell and toxin detection to our partners who are directly impacted by these blooms,” Trainer said. “This will help the tribe and all coastal managers make rapid, informed decisions about seafood safety.”

At the UW, MacCready will work with oceanographers , at the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, and , in the School of Oceanography, to combine their LiveOcean model with those water sample results and other information, including beachside monitoring by the Washington program and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and real-time data from a NOAA offshore robot, the Environmental Sample Processor, by the 91探花and NOAA.

The team will use the LiveOcean model to produce a forecast mapping toxicity risk leading up to each scheduled razor clam dig, in the form of a bulletin for coastal resource managers.

鈥淭his really is the culmination of more than a decade of basic research on the physics and biology behind these toxic blooms,鈥� said project co-lead , a former 91探花scientist now based at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.

A previous version of the HAB Bulletin was produced by Hickey and Trainer from 2008 to 2011 with funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new project is funded by NOAA鈥檚 National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, through its research program.

鈥淲e are excited to help bring about reliable predictions of when and where these toxic blooms can be expected, as it will help us better provide our citizens safe access to some of the best seafood in the world,鈥� said Matt Hunter, a shellfish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The forecasts will be available online starting next summer through the UW-based website.

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For more information, contact MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu and McCabe at聽206-685-0599 or rmccabe@ocean.washington.edu.

See on NOAA’s website.

“We have toxic algae events that result in shellfish closures off the Washington and Oregon coast every three to five years or so, but none of them have been as large as this one,” said lead author , a research scientist at the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a collaborative center with NOAA. “This one was entirely different, and our results show that it was connected to the unusual ocean conditions.”

The is now online in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“This paper is significant because it identifies a link between ocean conditions and the magnitude of the toxic bloom in 2015 that resulted in the highest levels of domoic acid contamination in the food web ever recorded for many species,” said co-author Kathi Lefebvre, a marine biologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “This is an eye-opener for what the future may hold as ocean conditions continue to warm globally.”

The authors found that the 2015 harmful algal bloom, which set records for its spatial extent and the level of toxicity, was dominated by a single species of diatom, Pseudo-nitzschia australis, normally found farther south off California.

Warm water not only allowed this species to survive, it also created an environment favoring its growth. By early 2015 the warm “blob” had moved toward shore and spread all along the West Coast. Warmer water creates less dense surface water that is more likely to stay floating on the surface, where it can become depleted in nutrients.

Previous laboratory studies by co-author William Cochlan of San Francisco State University showed that P. australis can take up nitrogen very quickly from a variety of sources, and appear to outcompete other, nontoxic phytoplankton in nutrient-depleted warm water.

For the new study, Cochlan’s lab performed experiments with P. australis from the 2015 bloom. They showed that when these cells experience warmer temperatures and get more nutrients they can double or triple their cell division rates, allowing them to potentially bloom into a large population fairly quickly at sea.

“When springtime shifts in wind direction brought deeper, nutrient-rich water upward near the coast, a small population of P. australis became a big population, which was then washed ashore along the West Coast by late spring storms,” said co-author Barbara Hickey, a 91探花professor of oceanography.

This was especially damaging in a year dominated by P. australis.

“This species is almost always highly toxic,” said co-author Raphael Kudela, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It blooms every spring off California, and there are frequently marine mammal impacts. But to see P. australis up and down the coast like this was unprecedented.”

Toxic algae come in many forms, but off the West Coast the major health and economic threat comes from various Pseudo-nitzschia species which can, under certain conditions, produce domoic acid, which can cause gastrointestinal distress, seizures, memory loss and even death.

Toxins can accumulate in razor clams and mussels, making them unsafe for human consumption. But the effects in the ecosystem are more widespread and long-lasting. Shellfish and anchovies containing toxins can get eaten by marine mammals and birds. If toxic algae settle to the ocean floor, they also can get eaten by bottom-dwelling animals like crabs, which then become unsafe to eat.

In late May 2015, a sea lion was found convulsing on a Washington beach, and domoic acid was identified in its feces.

“That’s something we’d never seen before in Washington, and when we heard this news we knew something huge was going on,” said co-author Vera Trainer, a research oceanographer at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

That year saw the largest geographic extent of marine mammal impacts ever recorded.

The 91探花participated in a NOAA-led that sampled water from southern California up to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The new study includes those observations, collected near the end of the Washington bloom, as well as other ongoing beach monitoring and water sampling efforts that filter seawater to see the life it contains.

Researchers at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center examined the water samples under a high-resolution scanning electron microscope to identify the species present.

“As we started getting more and more of the samples that coincided with the peaks in the razor clam toxicity, it was quite clear that P. australis was the dominant species all along the coast,” Trainer said.

State resource managers have been collecting shellfish to monitor for toxins for decades. Out on the water, samples collected by the and other efforts have also contributed to a 25-year record of toxic algae events.

The new paper compares the history of toxins in razor clams to indices of ocean climate variability, and finds a connection with El Ni帽o and the longer-term Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

“There’s a significant connection there,” McCabe said.聽 “The toxic events also tend to coincide with previously established marine ecosystem shifts. We had not made that connection before, and I think it’s fascinating.”

Ocean climate cycles could help understand and better predict the emergence of toxic algal blooms. And while the blob was a one-time event that was not due to global warming, it provides a window into what climate change might look like.

“Species like Pseudo-nitzchia are extremely well-poised to take advantage of background warming,” McCabe said. “Pseudo-nitzchia are always out there along our coast. The fact that they are almost engineered to take advantage of situations like this 鈥� warm temperatures and low nutrients 鈥� that is concerning.”

He recommends more monitoring of harmful algal blooms, through collecting shellfish and water samples on the coast and offshore to see whether toxins or toxin-producing algae are present, and if so, which species.

“Without stably funded programs like that, we’re just going to be blind,” McCabe said.

Other co-authors are Richard Thomson at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans; Frances Gulland at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California; and Nicolaus Adams and Brian Bill at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

The research was primarily funded by NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science’s . Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and COAST through SFSU.

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For more information, contact McCabe at 206-685-0599 or rmccabe@ocean.washington.edu, Trainer at vera.l.trainer@noaa.gov or after Oct. 3 at 206-860-6788, and Lefebvre at 206-302-2454 or kathi.lefebvre@noaa.gov.

Scientists with the 91探花 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed a new tool this week that will constantly be on the lookout for harmful algal blooms and their toxins off the coast of La Push, Washington.

The Environmental Sample Processor, or ESP, was deployed May 23 for the first time off the Pacific Northwest coast with sensors to monitor specific algal species and a harmful toxin they emit, domoic acid. The tool will provide autonomous, near-real-time measurements of the amount of toxin and the concentrations of six potentially harmful algal species.

The instrument was placed 13 miles offshore in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. It is near the Juan de Fuca eddy, and in a where offshore Pseudo-nitzschia blooms 鈥� a common Pacific harmful algal species 鈥� travel to coastal beaches where they can contaminate shellfish. The tool sits about 50 feet below the surface near the , first deployed by researchers from NOAA and the 91探花Applied Physics Laboratory in 2010 to measure other variables such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, currents and acidity.

, an oceanographer at the 91探花Applied Physics Laboratory, led the deployment of the new instrument with , a scientist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, as part of a larger collaborative project.

The was developed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to automate water-testing that normally requires a boat trip to sea and lab analyses. MBARI scientist Roman Marin helped install the instrument that will beam results back to shore three times a week for the next six weeks. The research team will collect the tool in July, and then deploy another to monitor during the late summer season.

The installation of new technology to monitor harmful algal blooms in the Pacific Northwest comes after a in 2015, and worries that such events could become under climate change.

The on bloom toxicity and algal species biomass will be made available directly to state coastal managers and public health officials, including coastal tribes, through the website of the UW-based , or NANOOS.

Coastal managers will use early warning data from the instrument to inform proactive shellfish toxicity testing, and facilitate timely decision-making on shellfish harvesting opportunities and closures.

“Anyone can access the data in near-real-time,” said , an oceanographer at the 91探花Applied Physics Laboratory and affiliate faculty member in the 91探花School of Oceanography, and director of NANOOS. “It’s an early warning sentry.”

The new data will also be made available to 91探花oceanographers to help develop a computer forecast, , that simulates how currents travel and affect local marine conditions along Washington’s coast and into Puget Sound and Canada’s Strait of Georgia.

The new tool’s deployment is part of a collaborative project led by the 91探花and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and funded by the NOAA-led U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System. Partners include NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, NANOOS, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Florida-based Spyglass Technologies, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Bellingham’s Northwest Indian College.

Ship time aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson to deploy the tool was provided by the 91探花School of Oceanography, and the crew included undergraduate students from the 91探花and the Northwest Indian College.

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For more information, contact Mickett at jmickett@apl.washington.edu or 206-897-1795, Newton at newton@apl.washington.edu or 206-543-9152, and Moore at 206-860-3327 or stephanie.moore@noaa.gov.

See a related on NOAA’s website.

But until recently, scientists interested in these single-celled creatures knew next to nothing about their genes.

91探花 scientists have sequenced the complete genetic makeup of one of these algae. As they recently reported , it is only the second time that researchers have sequenced the genome of one of these ecologically important and plentiful algae, known as . Researchers hope to better understand haptophytes and perhaps transform them into an important new tool for aquaculture, biofuel production and nutrition.

“Haptophytes are really important in carbon dioxide management and they form a critical link in the aquatic foodchain,” said senior author and 91探花biology professor . “This new genome shows us so much about this group.”

The haptophyte Cattolico and her team studied is Chrysochromulina tobin, and it thrives in oceans across the globe. The researchers spent years on a series of experiments to sequence all of Chrysochromulina‘s genes and understand how this creature turns different genes on and off throughout the day. In the process, they discovered that Chrysochromulina would make an ideal subject for investigating how algae make fat, a process important for nutrition, ecology and biofuel production.

“It turns out that their fat content gets high during the day and goes down during the night,” said Cattolico. “A very simple pattern, and ideal for follow-up.”

She believes that that these extreme changes in fat content 鈥� even within the span of a single day 鈥� may help ecologists understand when microscopic animals in the water column choose to feast upon these algae. But knowledge of how the algal species regulates its fat stores could also help humans.

“Algae recently became more familiar to the general populace because of biofuel production,” said Cattolico. “We needed a simple alga for looking at fat production and fat regulation.”

This led Cattolico to team up with , then a graduate student in the 91探花Department of Genome Sciences, to sequence the complete genome of this species. Hovde wanted to work on algae in biofuel production, and Chrysochromulina was ideally suited for the task because, unlike most other haptophytes, it has no protective cell wall.

Hovde and Cattolico uncovered other surprises in the Chrysochromulina genome. Like other algae and plants, Chrysochromulina uses light to make food, through the process of photosynthesis. But they also found another gene, called xanthorhodopsin, that may let the alga harvest light and do work outside of the traditional photosynthesis pathway. Cattolico does not know how the alga uses this gene, but would like to investigate this in the future.

In addition, they identified numerous genes that appear to harbor antibiotic activity, which may be useful as the need for new antibiotics continues to rise. But Chrysochromulina is not universally against bacteria. Through this project, Cattolico and her team discovered that there are at least 10 bacterial species that appear to enjoy living near Chrysochromulina.

“That leads to some interesting questions,” said Cattolico. “Is Chrysochromulina selectively using its antimicrobials? Is it ‘farming’ beneficial bacteria in its neighborhood?”

Cattolico would like to understand how these bacteria affect which genes Chrysochromulina switches on and off. That information may pave the way for new studies of the ecology of haptophytes, which could be critical in the face of a changing global climate.

“Haptophytes are very important to our ocean health, especially with these massive 鈥攕ometimes toxic 鈥� blooms they make,” said Cattolico. “We need to understand this issue because ecosystems are only going to get more compromised with climate change.”

The research was published Sept. 23 in the online, open-access journal PLOS Genetics. First author Hovde is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Other 91探花co-authors are , Heather Hunsperger, Scott Ryken, Will Yost, Johnathan Patterson and . and were co-authors from Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as from San Diego State University. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Washington Sea Grant, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

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For more information, contact Cattolico at 206-543-1627 or racat@u.washington.edu.

Grant numbers: U.S. Department of Energy (DE-EE0003046), Sea Grant (NA07OAR-4170007), Los Alamos (WSYN_BIO), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (CBCALL 12-LS6-1-0622), NIH (1RL1CA133831, T32 HG00035), NSF (DGE-0718124, DGE-1256082).

91探花research analyst left June 15 from Newport, Oregon, aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research vessel Bell M. Shimada. He is part of a NOAA-led team of harmful algae experts who are surveying the extent of the patch and searching for “hot spots” 鈥� swirling eddies where from the 91探花and NOAA shows the algae can grow and become toxic to marine animals and humans.

“The current bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia spp., the diatom responsible for domoic acid and amnesic shellfish poisoning, appears to be the biggest spatially we have ever observed,” Odell said. “It has also lasted for an incredibly long time 鈥� months, instead of the usual week or two.”

Odell is the coastal sampling coordinator at the UW’s in Forks, Washington, part of the 91探花. From his base in Hoquiam, Odell samples shellfish, phytoplankton and water quality, and responds to toxic algae bloom events along Washington’s outer coast.

Now he is doing toxin sampling on the three-week first leg of the NOAA voyage, from San Diego to San Francisco. Three more legs will continue through mid-September, surveying up to the north end of Vancouver Island.

The first samples collected from near San Diego were fairly clean, Odell said, suggesting they were still south of the patch. More recent samples collected this week from near Santa Barbara showed the first signs of the harmful algae. The massive bloom is known to extend at least from central California to Vancouver Island, with reports coming from as far north as Alaska.

As the ship travels north it is making a large back-and-forth grid, sampling the water from very near shore to several miles offshore. NOAA scientists initially scheduled the cruise to survey sardine and hake. Researchers from the UW, NOAA and other partners were invited to join and use the opportunity to conduct a large-scale sampling for marine toxins.

The bloom includes some of the highest toxin levels ever recorded in Monterey Bay, California, and along the central Oregon coast. All of Washington’s razor clamming beaches are currently closed, and the southern coast of Washington has the largest-ever closure of our state’s Dungeness crab fishery.

For the past 12 years, Odell has been a research analyst for the UW-led . The organization provides monitoring data and other information about toxic algae blooms to coastal communities on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

The UW’s is involved in a similar monitoring effort for Puget Sound, , which has some 50 volunteers monitor 33 sites weekly throughout the sound.

The massive bloom that emerged this spring comes after a few relatively quiet years. While the phenomenon is natural and cannot be prevented, better knowledge could help to predict and prepare for its effects.

In recent years, 91探花oceanographers including and sampled coastal waters to help identify the origin of toxic Pseudo-nitzschia cells on the Washington and Oregon coasts. The studies resulted in the development of that can simulate how the blooms travel.

Computer-based forecasts rely on continuous observations from onshore sampling efforts and offshore buoys. A regional led by , an oceanographer at the 91探花Applied Physics Laboratory, combines water observations from federal, state and other agencies and provides that information and some forecasts to users in real time.

“Such observations are critical to understanding what new elements in the coastal ocean produced such a massive toxic bloom this year, and whether we should expect these conditions to continue,” Hickey said.

The main culprit for the current toxicity is Pseudo-nitzschia, a tiny algae that under certain conditions releases an acid that acts as a neurotoxin. On campus, 91探花oceanographers are using genetic tools to better understand these microscopic creatures and learn how they to changing conditions.

What caused the current bloom remains a mystery. , a research meteorologist at the 91探花Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, coined the term “the blob” for the current huge patch of unusually warm water off the West Coast, and has its origins. Whether warm water is connected to the algal bloom is unknown.

“Our goal is to try to put this story together once we have data from the cruises,” , a NOAA scientist and 91探花affiliate professor of aquatic and fisheries sciences, told the . She manages the at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and is overseeing the current sampling effort.

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For more information, contact Odell at odellamo@uw.edu. He is at sea until July 5 with limited Internet connection.

See also the NOAA about this summer’s monitoring cruise, and a list of 91探花experts on harmful algal blooms.

91探花 oceanographers have created a tool to help predict when harmful algae might strike. A few days’ warning could prevent last-minute beach closures or shellfish harvest losses, and reduce the risk of eating a clam filled with a that can lead to permanent short-term memory loss, or even death.

The researchers developed a computer model to track when harmful algae will get carried to Washington and Oregon beaches. A study published in April in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows the model, when fed the right data, could predict most of the toxic algae events recorded in between 2004 and 2007.

The is part of a larger to model and predict toxic algal blooms in the Pacific Northwest, involving years of research into how the blooms form offshore and travel to coastal waters.

Saltwater and freshwater algal blooms are different from each other, of course, and different regions of the country have unique situations.

“In Florida they have one species, not 12, and it’s extremely predictable, it happens every year. And you can see those blooms from a satellite,” said co-author , a 91探花professor of oceanography who has spent four decades studying Northwest coastal ocean currents. “Here you have to have an electron microscope to see these things.”

In Washington, harmful algal blooms are a largely naturally occurring phenomenon that produce neurotoxins that can accumulate in razor clams, creating an economic and public-health concern.

Better predictions for when toxic algae might hit would prevent last-minute beach closures, and also could also give shellfish growers time to prepare and harvest clams before they become contaminated.

Hickey and co-author at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle previously used their combined knowledge and expertise to publish a weekly bulletin for predicting toxic events.

The computer model instead uses sensors that track the ocean conditions, then combines those with weather forecasts to generate an ocean prediction for the next few days. It harnesses recent advances in computing, as well as increasing knowledge of coastal currents and the conditions that lead to toxic algal blooms in this region.

91探花 in 2005 had established a swirling mass of water off the coast between Washington and British Columbia, known as the Juan de Fuca eddy, as the major source for harmful algae that affect the Washington coast in summer and fall.

“For some reason when the cells get in there they can stay longer than in other places, and a lot of times they become toxic,” Hickey said.

A 2013 by Hickey established a second source of harmful algal blooms, primarily in the spring, at Heceta Bank, a fishing area west of Eugene, Oregon.

“In the springtime the main currents are actually running in the other direction than in summer, and if you have a big storm, Heceta Bank also is a place where you can get the toxic algae coming from that area, and then moving up the coast, joining the Columbia River plume, and they end up impacting our fisheries in the springtime offshore of Willapa Bay and the Grays Harbor area,” Hickey said.

Earlier by Hickey had studied the freshwater plume emerging from the Columbia River at the Washington-Oregon border. The new model incorporates those observations to generate its predictions.

“We found that it’s all important,” Hickey said. “You have to get what’s happening in Puget Sound and the Columbia River right to make the coastal ocean right.”

The conditions must first be just right for toxic organisms to grow 鈥� a process that’s still somewhat mysterious 鈥� and then reach local shores.

“It turns out there has to be quite a miraculous set of circumstances,” Hickey said, for toxins to reach the beach. Foul weather must keep the eddy circulating long enough for the toxins to develop, then good weather lets them escape and float down the coast. A few days later, bad weather must develop to reverse the currents and push the algae toward the beach.

Tests of the model in the new confirmed that algae from the northern source reach the Washington coast in the late summer and early fall, and the southern source tends to reach the shore in the late winter and early spring. The wind direction determines the algae’s path.

So far, this year has had few toxic blooms on Northwest coasts, another benefit of this summer’s nice weather.

“If you have really good weather all the way until the October storms hit, you probably won’t see any harmful algal blooms because they just get blown south to Oregon and blown off the coast,” Hickey said. “If you have crummy summer weather, where the weather changes and the winds and the currents keep changing direction, then it’s more likely to be hazardous for harmful algal blooms.”

The first author of the paper introducing the model is , a former 91探花postdoctoral researcher and now a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego. Two upcoming companion papers will use the same model to focus on the biology (which organisms grow under what conditions) and the water chemistry (oxygen level, acidity and other variables).

Co-author , a 91探花professor of oceanography, leads the 91探花 that’s putting the short-term forecasts online. The tool, which will initially focus on ocean acidity and oxygen levels, is expected to be operational later this year.

Other co-authors of the first paper are , and graduate student at the UW; , a former 91探花graduate student now at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; , a former 91探花postdoctoral researcher now at the University of California, Irvine; and at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The research was funded by NOAA and the National Science Foundation.

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聽For more information, contact Hickey at bhickey@uw.edu or MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: NOAA: NA09NOS4780180 and NSF: OCE0942675