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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 · 8h
I like how you included a cabuGARet pun just for @solomonrdavid.bsky.social
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 8h
This is brilliant: the acknowledgement section of PhD dissertations... "Thank you to the friends who simply knew not to ask." "I know I was the reason you bought that Roomba" science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...
science.anu.edu.au
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements
After reading hundreds and hundreds of PhD theses, we accidentally discovered how to write the perfect PhD acknowledgement: it's a kind of poetry.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Pumice www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...
discoverwildlife.com
It incredibly floated, was twice the size of Manhattan and travelled a colossal 3,000km, transporting millions of animals on the way | Discover Wildlife
When an undersea volcano erupted in the Pacific Ocean, it created a vast raft of floating rock
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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Blue button jellies float on the waters surface. They’re related to true jellies, but they’ve got a dry top that feels a bit like a fingernail, and is filled with air-trapping chambers to keep the jelly above the waves This float also means they slide on the water like hockey pucks 🏒
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Blue whale news @bluewhalenews.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Hey everyone, last chance to sign up as a member of the American Cetacean Society and get a hard copy of the upcoming Whalewatcher issue (136 pages of amazing blue whale goodness edited by yours truly) acs.memberclicks.net/membership
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Two papers accepted within minutes of each other after a long review process!!!! Must be a record for me.
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Scott Doney @scottdoney.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The record breaking magnitude of this year’s El Niño highlights the need to take action now to protect marine ecosystems and put in place resources for future events that will be supercharged by further ocean warming 🌊 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Marine ecosystems in peril: Time to prepare for super El Niño | PNAS
Marine ecosystems in peril: Time to prepare for super El Niño
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It's always The Stranger doing the good reporting. Why the ferry outages from sick-outs? Because ferry engineers are routinely expected to work 7 day weeks and accrue 1500 hours of overtime a year (i.e. nearly 70-hour weeks). www.thestranger.com/news/twenty-...
thestranger.com
Twenty-Three Washington State Ferry Engineers Called in Sick Monday - The Stranger
On Monday morning, the Washington State Ferries (WSF) announced that 13 of its 18 ferries were out of service, after 23 engine room employees “called in sick.” Additionally, every qualified employee s...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
octo-pie in your face? ;)
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
How fisheries issues in Alaska may decide the fate of the US Senate, and the current administration's plans for the next two years [gift article link] www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/u...
nytimes.com
How Alaska’s Fish Became a Defining Issue for the Midterms (Gift Article)
In the battle for an Alaska Senate seat and the governor’s mansion, the oil-dependent state’s declining fisheries loom large, but no one wants to look at the biggest culprit, climate change.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Staggering how many of the top 100 unanswered science questions are in fields that received little and declining funding: many in biology! www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/s...
nytimes.com
What Are the Biggest Questions in Science Today? 100 Scientists Weigh In.
We asked 100 scientists about unsolved problems in their fields. They sent back provocations — on the origins of life, the possibilities for human progress and much more.
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Elizabeth Anne, PhD @lacksauthority.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
never the wrong time for this classic
Screenshot of a tweet by @RobbtKraft reading “scientist: "does everyone here know what Watson and Crick discovered?" 
me from back of room: "Rosalind Franklin's notes"”
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I have a serious legal and moral issue in studying blue whales!
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Thanks so much for the explanation! I'll be adding it to my R graphics class!
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Interesting ideas, though I prefer to create a pdf of a known width and height, rather than using ggview and saving it. pdf seems more reliable on all machines.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
What's there to debate? !!!!
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Here, BS = bootstrap (a statistical resampling method for estimating uncertainty)
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Why acronyms are problematic.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Admittedly, we're also cyberattacking our own government and various other entities...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Good luck! It's a mammoth process for sure, best advice I got was to compile lists of everything as you go along to make it easier when the time comes.
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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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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A sign of a truly cultured education!
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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 · 30/09/2026
Seriously! Wow, that's amazing!
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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 · 26/09/2026
Me too! Same reaction!
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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
Unintended consequence: all publishers ban submissions from federally funded research.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Now if there was just a magical open pot of government money for all publications, that would work great. Not what the situation is now. And won't be in the future after NSF removes page charges from allowable grant costs.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Great in theory, complicated in practice. For example, a student on a fellowship with money for open-access publication costs. What if they are more prolific than expected and publish 5 papers instead of 3? And most papers published after graduation (after end of the fellowship).
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Sure, though I'm not sure how many people actually download not-final versions of papers.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I'm not uninterested but they are probably about 10,000th on my list of interesting animals. It's a long list to be sure.
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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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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
All those Cope papers are available for free at BHL since they are out of copyright. Though he might still not respond... and yeah, what the hell was he thinking???? www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/1437...
biodiversitylibrary.org
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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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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah other than the $1500-7000 the author needs to pay for that. But sure...
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah the public funding rarely covers the costs of open-access articles (and under recent proposals from NSF will not cover any page charge costs at all). And and and a lot of research is done without any funding at all (most of mine).
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
You may not be aware that the latest NSF proposal for funding specifically cuts out all page charges from grants, i.e. they will not absolutely not pay for articles to be open access. Given a choice between buying two laptops for students or one open-access article ($3000)...
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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 · 24/09/2026
The more remarkable part is the de novo creation of matter, given that 100 g yields 115 g of protein+EAA+leucine on the top row.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Spent many holidays as a kid looking at limpets on field trips with my dad (G M Branch)
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm sure nothing will go wrong... go wrong go wrong go wrong
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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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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Oh man that is truly awful. My sympathy... and fear of having to do something like this soon too!
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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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