​UW News

Paul Gibbs, a mechanical engineer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, inspects the newest Adaptable Monitoring Package, or AMP, before a test in a saltwater pool. AMPs host a series of sensors that allow researchers to continuously monitor animals underwater.
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​Harvesting power from the ocean, through spinning underwater turbines or bobbing wave-energy converters, is an emerging frontier in renewable energy.

Alaska Public Media-

If you think trying to carry on a conversation in a noisy restaurant or bar is difficult, imagine how whales in the noisy waters of the Salish Sea feel. Whale scientists think rising levels of underwater noise are having a harmful effect on the Northwest’s iconic killer whales. Now the Port of Vancouver, in British Columbia, is spearheading an experiment to temporarily slow down big ships to reduce noise.
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The Pulse ~

The largest public infrastructure project in the history of Northwest Florida is off to a big start, with staging and preliminary construction to replace the 57-year-old Pensacola Bay Bridge already beginning.

On the banks of Bayou Chico west of downtown Pensacola, towering cranes have arrived, becoming part of the skyline as preparations are underway along the eastern shore of the waterfront.

Alaskan Dispatch ~ 

​A new recovery plan for endangered Cook Inlet belugas focuses on counteracting what federal regulators believe are the biggest threats to Alaska's most urban whales, but none that would stop local economic activity.

Hants Journal-  Fisheries and Oceans Canada says tidal energy proponents in the Minas Passage have more environmental monitoring and planning to do before deploying turbines.

The federal department, responsible for managing Canada’s fisheries and safeguarding its waters, published a Review of the Environmental Effects Monitoring Program for the Fundy Tidal Energy Project in April 2016.
 

KTVA -

The biggest barge crane on the west coast is currently in Anchorage. It’s carrying ten steel piles, each 200 feet long, four feet in diameter and weighing more than 50 tons.

They’re slowly being hammered into Cook Inlet as part of the Port of Anchorage’s modernization project, which will replace deteriorating infrastructure.

“The question was asked, ‘What do you need to do to keep cargo moving across the dock for the state of Alaska for the next 75 years?’” said Lon Elledge, program manager for the Anchorage Port Modernization Project. “The Port has enough capacity for the people of Alaska. What it doesn’t have is reliable docks.”