Okeanos Explorer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship commissioned in August, just returned to Seattle’s Pier 66 after its trial run off Washington’s coast. The crew didn’t expect to find underwater volcanoes out there, maps from previous missions showed only a bump on the seafloor about 200 miles west of Grays Harbor. But sure enough, the contours of a large volcano emerged as sonar mapped the ocean floor more than 10,000 feet below the surface. Hey, just one more thing to watch out for!
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Here’s an important follow-up to our recent Orca story posting. Seems that Tucker the dog is trained to track the scent of orca poop. How, or why…who knows! (Come on, how would you teach a dog to do that!) But University of Washington researchers now use him to help them find and gather these scat samples which, in turn, tell them that the animals aren’t getting enough to eat. Here’s the story…from Seattle Times. Somebody– give that dog a bone! 
