John Ryan

@heyjohnryan.bsky.social

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KUOW Public Radio environment reporter. Seattle. Is this thing on? Tips, leaks--DM me, or email jryan@kuow.org, or Signal: @heyjohnryan.10

University of Washington researcher Jason Hodin holds a sunflower star, upside down, at Friday Harbor Laboratories. Willem Weertman photo.
The Black Ball ferry enters Port Angeles harbor.
In a cedar sculpture, Ko-Kwal-Alwoot, the immortal protector of the Samish people, holds a salmon aloft in Deception Pass State Park
University of Washington research assistant Tess Chapman measures a sunflower star at Friday Harbor Labs
Sea urchins grazing in a kelp forest off San Juan Island
sunflower stars in SE Alaska
Washington fisherman Joseph Veitenhans discovered the buoys—or “cans,” as he calls them—were no longer relaying data on ocean conditions in January, when he took his boat out from Westport. It was the start of Dungeness crab season, Washington’s most valuable commercial fishery, hauling up about $80 million of the bright red bottom dwellers annually. “It's through the winter, the worst time to be on the ocean, which is why the cans are kind of crucial,” he said. “Any time I leave Westport, I'm checking those cans.” Veitenhans said, at first, he wasn’t sure if the buoys were just malfunctioning. He wrote researchers to find out when the cans would be back online and was disappointed to learn they’d been eliminated. "There's a lot of other people in the Westport crab fleet who rely on these cans for their crew and their safety when they're going out and doing this fishery,” Veitenhans said from his boat while fishing for halibut in the Gulf of Alaska.
BNSF locomotive towing an Amtrak Cascades passenger train
Mount Rainier looms above the South King County shoreline and the spray of a transient orca in Puget Sound on March 26, 2026.
Lucy Mew, the silkiest cat you've ever seen, thanks KUOW Members for their support.
Protesters hold signs on a sidewalk outside the offices of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency in Seattle.
Scott Boyd. Photo by Kathleen Lumiere.
A murmuration of dunlins. Video by Kathleen Lumiere.