Trevor A. Branch
@trevorabranch
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
I always go right to google ngram viewer and... both copy editors are right: ink-blot is clearly the wrong thing to use and either alternative is better books.google.com/ngrams/
Fabulous new killer whale paper, showing that mammal-eaters are seen much more often around Seattle's seas, while fish-eating resident killer whales are now more rarely seen journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Artist Wyland sues FIFA for $25 million for painting over enormous mural of whales in Dallas www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/u...
Check out this incredible museum The Whale, in Andenes in northern Norway. Opens June 4, 2027. The architecture is truly incredible. I've been helping with one of the displays. thewhale.com
And this is very much existent tech. Vast acoustic arrays are already deployed and tracking fish all over the world. For example the inset map below is all of the detection places on the US east coast. Would seem sufficient for right whales. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
In fisheries models, natural mortality (M) is often set to 0.2 per year. A detailed derivation of this result was provided by John Pope in 1975, see below:
Today we start with the Bayesian portion of modeling in my class... xkcd.com/2545/
Major decline in humpback whales in Prince William Sound following the 2014-16 marine heatwave onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
It's fast and easy to use, apparently 2/3rds of people think that is all they want, including me
A 481-m tsunami last year in Tracy Arm Fjord close to Juneau (a popular and spectacular cruise ship destination that I have visited). With an incredible new simulation model of the waves. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
If you are interested in working with me on a PhD on the effects of killer whale fear on baleen whale ecology, behavior, and evolution... and you would be eligible for the fellowship below... contact me! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...
Pretty cool project: Open Tree of Life. Here are the baleen whales in all their glory, with the surprising side story that blue and fin whales, which hybridize frequently, are not very closely related (B. musculus and B. physalus in the figure)
"Tinned fish is finally having a moment" Clicked on this, but disappointed to see the prices of the selected fish: $7 to $20 per tin of fish seems excessive. www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/r...
Astonishing science out today: "First Detection of Exoplanetary Cannabinoids: Evidence for THC and CBD in the Atmosphere of K2-18b" arxiv.org/abs/2603.29700
xkcd.com/3226/ Mouseover text: "While I try to do my part to destroy the environment, I try not to focus too much on individual responsibility. By pushing for broad policy changes, we can collectively do far more damage to the biosphere than any of us could on our own." #satire
So excited! All the articles are finished for this special issue, now it's on to the typesetting and layout!
Cooperative lifting out of the water by sperm whales for a newborn so that it can breathe, amazing work, second paper on this sperm whale birth www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Extraordinary footage of a sperm whale birth shows coordinated help from family and non-family members for hours after birth, social behavior usually associated with primates www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
Clearly, that octopus watched Star Wars and figured out how to avoid being eaten.
Nature is crazy. A spider that mimics having a deadly fungus infection to avoid being eaten. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/s...
A counter-enclave near the Straits of Hormuz. The outer parts here belong to the UAE. Then there is a rough circle belonging to Oman completely contained within the UAE. And within it is Nahwa: a UAE counter-enclave contained entirely within Oman entirely within the UAE
Guy: I have the biggest scientific hypophysis in the world!!!! Response: did you mean hypothesis??? Guy:
Congrats to the blitzbokke! Champions in New York and in the Sevens Series overall by just two points over Fiji