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Trevor A. Branch

@trevorabranch.bsky.social
12K followers 289 following 2K posts

Professor at Univ of Washington @uwsafs.bsky.social I run models and synthesize data, love R graphics, and do research on the status of marine fisheries, fishing quotas, and blue whales @bluewhalenews.bsky.social

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Why acronyms are problematic.
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Prosanta Chakrabarty @prosanta.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Exciting news! We here at the LSU Museum of Natural Science @lsumns.bsky.social and Dept. of Biological Sciences are looking for Curator and Assistant Professor of Vertebrate Paleobiology! Come work with us! We are fun, supportive and active! lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...
lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor
All Job Postings will close at 12:01a.m. CST (1:01a.m. EST) on the specified Closing Date (if designated). If you close the browser or exit your application prior to submitting, the application progre...
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Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A deep-sea fish with a transparent head and rotating eyes, the Barreleye is one of the ocean’s strangest creatures. Original post
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
When you are convinced it's AI generated and then discover it is not and now you doubt everything
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The classic exploding whale news segment from 1970 www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CL...
youtube.com
The Exploding Whale: An infamous moment in Oregon history creates a strangely beloved icon
YouTube video by KATU News
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Pleased to announce our blue whale stranding compilation is now published! With a Shiny app to explore! doi.org/10.1111/mms.... krandrup.shinyapps.io/blue_whale_g...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Concern that executive action on recreational fishing and shark fishing may threaten the status of US fisheries as being well-managed, sustainable and science-based www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Trump’s executive order on recreational fishing is a ‘giveaway of fish and ocean ecosystem’, advocates warn
Federal agencies told to prioritize recreational fishing and to reconsider scientific standards as well as regulations
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I wandered over to Twitter for the first time in months to advertise a new paper and discovered that my notification feed there consists of random posts by people I never followed on topics I'm not interested in
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Pleased to announce our blue whale stranding compilation is now published! With a Shiny app to explore! doi.org/10.1111/mms.... krandrup.shinyapps.io/blue_whale_g...
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Larkin Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
PLEASE ask me for my article! It's always a thrill to know that someone wants to read it, and I hate that knowledge is gatekept like this. Not only do we not get paid if you pay the fee, but we have to pay the journal thousands of dollars for the "privilege" of making it open-access (not paywalled)
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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I’m so bored with all the discussion around AI. Can we talk about some useful technology, like heat pumps?
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Have you ever tried to read a scientific journal article and been told “you don’t have access, pay to download this article?” Did you know that the author of that article gets $0 if you pay? Instead, you can email the author and ask for a free copy! I’d be delighted to help and answer questions!
Screenshot of a scientific journal paywall
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Big accusation roils the Maine senate race www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
propublica.org
The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We have *six days* left until the Academy of Natural Sciences, North America's oldest Natural History museum, is scheduled to close it's doors. Here are *six reasons* why we cannot - and will not- let that happen.
a slide that says 6 days until the doors close -- 6 reasons we can keep them open, save-the-academy.org @savetheacademy
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Incredible world record by 6 yr old solving Rubik's cube. Amazing. Question: do young kids have better manual dexterity and reflexes than older kids and adults? Better memory agility? Shades of Ender's Game! www.youtube.com/shorts/IYp8j...
youtube.com
Six-year-old Chinese girl breaks Rubik's Cube world record – twice
YouTube video by The Telegraph
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A couple weeks ago I heard a joyful shriek from across the street. My neighbor kids, who I planted milkweed for, found 2 monarch caterpillars by their stoop. This week, those monarchs hatched. Our block is fully concrete, .3 miles to the closest green space. But we’re supporting the life cycle 🥰
A freshly hatched monarch butterfly
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Assistant Professor, fisheries stock assessment Michigan, $100-125K / yr, 12 mo position renewable annually. careers.msu.edu/jobs/assista...
careers.msu.edu
Assistant Professor-FixedTerm - East Lansing, Michigan, United States
Position Summary The Quantitative Fisheries Center (QFC) within the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University invites applications for a full‐time, 12-month fixed-term Assistan...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I mean AI is annoying but it's not like it's actually going to destroy civilization as we know it.... newrepublic.com/post/215610/...
newrepublic.com
U.S. Nearly Started a War Because Military Used AI to Write a Report
An intelligence report about a Chinese ship, written with the help of AI, was “entirely false.”
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 18/09/2026
Humaning.
A four-panel comic. In panel 1, a Northern Cardinal and American Goldfinch perch above a busy crowd in a city, looking down. The cardinal says "It's a nice day to go humaning." The goldfinch says "Just look at them. Majestic." In panel 2, a close-up of the two birds. The cardinal says "Nobody tells you that you'll reach a certain age and suddenly get into humaning. I hit 3 years old, and then bam."The birds are looking out over the crowd scene. In panel 3, the cardinal says "Their calls sound funny to us, but each one has a unique meaning." Below, people are saying various things: "I'm tired." "Where's my phone?" "I'd murder a burrito." In panel 4, the birds look down excitedly at a man walking by. The cardinal says "Wait, is that a guy who got dressed in the dark and put his shirt on inside out and backwards?" And the goldfinch exclaims, "Holy... that's a lifer!"
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John P. Friel, Ph.D. @friel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Voici le crâne de la bête / Behold the skull of the beast. #FossilFriday
Skull of the fossil whale Odobenocetops leptodon on display at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Can someone explain to me why so many authors fail to capitalize "the Northern Hemisphere" and "the Southern Hemisphere"? I mean there really is only one of each, right? What am I missing?
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Crazy looking critter: Odobenocetops, a *dolphin* ancestor, that looked like a bad mashup of a whale, a walrus, and a narwhal, lived around 7-15 million years ago.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
How come everyone knows about Megalodon but I've never heard of Livyatan? Massive predator that ate baleen whales and lived at the same time as Megalodon. Biggest biting teeth of them all.
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Pacific bluefin tuna will get some help as countries agree to new harvest strategy news.mongabay.com/2026/09/paci...
news.mongabay.com
Pacific bluefin tuna will get some help as countries agree to new harvest strategy
The annual meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) concluded on Sept. 4 with an agreement to adopt a long-term harvest strategy for Pacific bluefin tuna. The agreement aims to…
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Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Some glass sponges may be the oldest animals on Earth. Individuals of Monorhaphis chuni are estimated at over 11,000 years old, and they build a single skeletal spike up to 3m long, the largest natural glass structure any animal makes. 🧪 #SpongeThursday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
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Emma Vogel @efvogel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I love visuals that bring data to life, so I was very excited when I was asked to create animations for the @uitnorgesarktiske.bsky.social Museum showing the transatlantic scale of humpback whale migrations! This is just a subset of the data I am working with for @bioprotectproject.bsky.social🐋🌍🧪🌊
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 17/09/2026
47 years of average annual sea ice thickness across the #Arctic... 🌊❄️🥼 Graphic now available to include 2025 at: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...
Collection of small polar stereographic maps showing the average yearly Arctic sea-ice thickness for each year from 1979 to 2025. There is large spatial variability, but a long-term decreasing trend. The thickness of ice ranges from 0 meters to more than 5 meters.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Writeup on The Whale: new amazing museum opening just north of the Lofoten Islands in Norway in May 2027. I've been involved a bit on one of their installations www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a...
smithsonianmag.com
A New Museum in Norway Is Bringing Visitors Into the World of Whales—From Life-Size Orcas to Immersive Underwater Exhibits
Opening in 2027, The Whale will explore the science, behavior, evolution and cultural history of whales through art, storytelling, sound and architecture
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 16/09/2026
Scientist here: It is widely known inside science that this—top-down imposition of a research agenda—leads to mostly rote, boring, non-innovative work. Building an institute to do discovery science is hard: you hire young people, put them together, hope synergies arise and ideas fall out.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Pet peeve: folks that say they are "going to Africa" for a vacation instead of the country they are traveling to. Just say "Namibia". Nobody says "I'm going to Europe" when they are going to Croatia. Africa is an enormous continent 3x the size of Europe, with 54 unique countries.
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My pettiest academia opinion is that people care way too much about how a citation is formatted. If I can find the paper you're referencing, you cited it fine. I don't care what's bolded and what's italicized and what order the year vs. issue number is presented in. Fight me. 🧪🦑🌎
A leading paper in my field and the very different ways that different journals require the citation of it to be formatted.
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UW College of the Environment @uwenvironment.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
UW study shows coyote density is 9 times higher in Seattle compared to the wild lands in Washington. “Coyotes are here to stay in cities, and it is up to us to learn how to live with them.” - Laura Prugh, professor in @uw-sefs.bsky.social bit.ly/46kdUVp
washington.edu
Coyote density is 9 times higher in Seattle than in Washington’s wild lands | UW News
A new UW study shows a nine-fold increase in coyote density in Seattle compared to natural areas of Washington state. Coyotes in urban environments have fewer p
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Choose me! Choose me!!!
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Prosanta Chakrabarty @prosanta.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Another big potential #FishJob Curator of Fishes (or Mammals, but let it be ichthyology) at the American Museum of Natural History careers.amnh.org/postings/4925
careers.amnh.org
Assistant Curator/Assistant Professor, Vertebrate Zoology
The Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) seeks an outstanding tenure-track Assistant Curator/Assistant Professor in either the Department of Ichthyology or M...
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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My PhD advisor. This all rings true to me; especially the part about Bob being kind and gracious. That counts for a lot.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Fact-checking Paul Greenberg's NYT op-ed on bottom trawling: a response by Max Mosler sustainablefisheries-uw.org/fact-checkin...
sustainablefisheries-uw.org
Fact-checking Paul Greenberg’s op-ed in the New York Times - Sustainable Fisheries UW
The New York Times spews misinformation with its recent op-ed calling to ban bottom trawling. This is a science-backed response to correct the record.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
What was the longest ever blue whale? Find out in the next issue of Whalewatcher: all blue whales all the time. ACS members get a free printed copy www.acsonline.org/membership
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Entire special issue of Whalewatcher on blue whales coming soon! Greatest of all time! Edited by yours truly with 30 articles over 130+ gorgeous pages. Members of the American Cetacean Society get a printed copy, become a member here: www.acsonline.org/membership
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Iceland's last whaling company (which has caught 81 fin whales this year) shrugs off the threat of a ban in the legislature (side note: fin whales are abundant in the North Atlantic, so this is a moral and not a sustainability issue) www.reuters.com/world/icelan...
reuters.com
Iceland's last whaling company shrugs off threat of permanent ban
Iceland's last remaining active whaling company said it believed it could survive a renewed push to ban ​the practice, given that previous attempts to outlaw whale hunting ‌had repeatedly failed.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Entire special issue of Whalewatcher on blue whales coming soon! Greatest of all time! Edited by yours truly with 30 articles over 130+ gorgeous pages. Members of the American Cetacean Society get a printed copy, become a member here: www.acsonline.org/membership
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Another iconic symbol of overfishing: bluefin tuna (think million dollar Japanese auctions), is returning to British waters and all populations are rebuilding or doing well. So much better of a story than 10 or 15 years ago.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Key midterm elections coming up in the US, glad to see we have nothing to worry about in terms of collusion or election interference from foreign powers.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Beefalo [cattle x bison] are not a thing: genetic tests reveal no bison DNA in most of the registered breeding animals. spacedaily.com/s-thirty-nin...
spacedaily.com
Thirty-nine of the 47 registered Beefalo whose genomes were sequenced carry no detectable bison ancestry, including the foundation bull that sold for $2.5 million in 1975 and whose pedigree recorded h...
The American Beefalo Association defines the breed as three-eighths bison. A genome-wide survey of frozen semen, drawn largely from animals collected at or near the founding of the breed, found that n...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Counterintuitively, the key to changing someone else's mind (or maybe yours!) is starting an open-minded discussion and listening to them. Start with: "Could you tell me more about that?" "Why do you think that?" www.upworthy.com/stanford-res...
upworthy.com
Stanford researchers find a single question could be the key to changing someone's mind
Curiosity goes a lot further than we might think.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just noticed that Bluesky automatically adds 1/3, 2/3 etc for multithreaded posts. Very useful since I often don't know how many posts I will thread together!
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Why do Southern Hemisphere studies need to specify "austral" summer, winter etc., but Northern Hemisphere studies don't need to specify "boreal" summer, winter etc.? Ponder that for a moment.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Incredible survival story: three days on top of an overturned boat, ankle deep in water and exposed to the elements with no food or water... in the remote Bering Sea www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/u...
nytimes.com
Boy, 15, Drifted for Days on an Overturned Boat Before Rescue
The teenager survived in the Bering Sea off Alaska without food or water before a fishing vessel pulled him to safety, the Coast Guard said.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
How do we know that AI is successfully solving math theorems? Only because there are some brilliant mathematicians checking the proofs... and posing them. Seems like we need a surge of investment in basic mathematics to take advantage of AI, check it, and make sure it is ethically used.
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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