Jessica Gephart

Unmasking the Sea Star Killer After a decade of carnage, we finally know what’s devastating sea stars along North America’s West Coast. Does that mean scientists can save them?

We are so proud of our sea star wasting work that came out today. This interactive article is very complete and includes beautiful videos.
Unmasking the Sea Star Killer www.biographic.com/unmasking-th...

Giant sea stars are melting away — and now scientists know why Canadian scientists say they’ve finally identified what is likely causing giant colourful sea stars in the Pacific Northwest to literally waste away: It's bacterium from the same family that causes ch...

After years of work, a team of researchers with support from The Nature Conservancy have identified the causative agent of Sea Star Wasting Disease! Big implications for my work & an inspiring example of the amazing things we can do w/ science...plus I'm quoted in it ;)
www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

NPR headline that reads "Today is the last day for many Education Department workers. Here's what they did"

BREAKING: Donald Trump officially terminated nearly half of all Education Department staff.

This is an all-out assault on our public schools and Americans with student loans.

A graphic with photos of Senator Warren saying: Step 1: Congress negotiates a deal that both parties support and it’s signed into law. Step 2: Trump tells Republicans what parts of the deal he wants to cancel. Step 3: Republicans in the Senate bend the knee and follow Trump’s orders to cancel the money. Apparently, Step 4: Republicans turn around and ask Democrats to negotiate more deals for next year’s funding.

Why should Democrats support a “bipartisan bill” just for Republicans to turn around and delete the parts Donald Trump doesn’t like?

The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu could be submerged in 25 years due to rising sea levels, so a plan is being implemented to relocate its population to Australia.

The era of climate migration is upon us.

Residents of Tuvalu are slowly resettling in Australia. This is only the beginning…

www.wired.com/story/the-fi...

Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump

Surely this will be the payment that finally gets the extortionist to stop demanding money

It’s Abu Ghraib all over again.

But inside our borders.

open access paper estimating the contribution of aquatic foods, and specific aquatic food groups (e.g., reef fish, pelagic fish, invertebrates) to household nutrient intake and adequacy in Kiribati. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@hsph.harvard.edu
@chrisgolden.bsky.social @jagephart.bsky.social

EPA eliminates research and development office, begins layoffs The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees.

The EPA has eliminated its research division, which for decades has provided the science behind regulations on clean air, clean water, and toxic chemicals.

The US can afford to monitor, research, and regulate the impacts of industries on human and environmental health. We are just choosing not to.

Senate panel raises hopes that NSF will restore killed grants Republicans promise to work with Democrats to salvage defeated amendment

🧪Have a terminated NSF grant? Or been impacted by such a termination? Call your Senators, esp if they're Repub!!

An amendment to restore killed NSF grants will later be debated on the *full Senate* floor, after it narrowly failed in committee today.

🧵 Brief thread 1/4

🎉 Check out our new @nceas-ucsb.bsky.social data paper presenting terrestrial and aquatic food flows from producing to consuming countries and the associated environmental pressures.

tinyurl.com/food-flow-data

Contracts Show Millions of Dollars and Diverted Disaster Resources Were Used to Build DeSantis’ ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ TPM has obtained and analyzed over a dozen contracts and invoices related...

Contracts show that, in at least one instance, resources allocated for the state’s “disaster preparedness” apparatus were diverted to "Alligator Alcatraz" as DeSantis’ office used emergency powers to quickly establish the camp during hurricane season.

Trump administration says it won't publish major climate change reports on NASA website as promised The Trump administration has made it harder for people, local and state governments to find critical climate change reports.

As I say here, “This document was written for the American people, paid for by the taxpayers, and it contains vital information we need to keep ourselves safe in a changing climate, as the disasters that continue to mount demonstrate so tragically and clearly.”

More by @borenbears.bsky.social here:

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.

"Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people who need it"
@hana-kiros.bsky.social, on spending $130,000 to burn food worth $800,000
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Beef or Bear? On Ambition, Academia, and the Art of Letting Go — The Food Archive I’m sure many of you have been watching The Bear —the TV show that follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, a brilliant young chef who returns home to Chicago to take over his late brother’s gritty sandwic...

After 20+ years of running at full speed in academia, I’m stepping into a new phase—less Bear, more Beef. A reflection on ambition, burnout, and what it means to let go of prestige to make room for purpose. Check out my new post on The Food Archive: shorturl.at/uyVsC

We're looking for a Postdoctoral Fellow to join the Horizon Europe project INSPIRI!

Help co-create imaginative, stakeholder-driven visions for Europe's ocean and water systems.

Learn more and apply by 31 August: www.stockholmresilience.org/4.aeea46911a...

Folds: If we’ve been told our whole lives that we can’t spend money on the arts because they’re not important—then why was taking over the Kennedy Center and the arts the first thing they did?

It is extremely important. It’s the bedrock of self-expression.

New publication alert 🌊

Blue swimming crab is one of the most important fisheries in #Indonesia and women are leading the way, creating innovative solutions to waste

Women's groups building more #inclusive #resilient and #sustainable fisheries ⤵️ doi.org/10.3389/focs...

@envdefensefund.bsky.social

Please share: PhD scholarship opportunity in mathematical ecology on the value of information for improving ecological management, open to international students, with a great team @hugepossum.bsky.social, Katriona Shea, Kate Helmstedt, & me at UQ, Australia 🌍 🧮, study.uq.edu.au/study-option...

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy.

I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

NSF Geo-Futures Program Geo-Futures is a conference-based program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that engages with, and provides educational resources for, students interested in pursuing a career in the geo...

Deadline for the GeoFutures program has been extended to 07-11-25. The program provides travel & mentoring support for geoscience undergrads attending the 2025 SACNAS conference. @accessiblegeo.bsky.social @agu.org @official-bweems.bsky.social @sacnas.bsky.social environment.uw.edu/about/inclus...

Experts say seafood deregulation could impact sustainability and supply A sweeping new executive order to deregulate the U.S. seafood sector risks unraveling decades of scientific progress and environmental protections, according to aquaculture and fishery scientists

Nice summary and coverage of our recent Marine Policy paper on the new U.S. seafood executive order & other disruptive governance actions: news.ucsb.edu/2025/021937/...

@jagephart.bsky.social

Washington, D.C., has a population roughly equivalent to Alaska's.

And it has zero senators. If D.C. had senators, the GOP megablil bill would have failed today.

Instead, Murkowski got carve-outs and money for Alaska, and then voted to subject DC to the bill

It is difficult to describe just how disastrous it would be if just-released NOAA budget proposal (or even large portions) were to be enacted: It would involve a wholesale dismantling (decimation, really) of entities relevant to weather, climate, & ocean research & prediction.

In Sudan, where children clung to life, doctors say USAID cuts have been fatal The Trump administration’s cuts to USAID had an immediate and deadly impact in war-ravaged Sudan, according to civilians, doctors and aid officials.

NEW: The death shadow cast by Musk.

“When U.S.-supported soup kitchens were forced to close, babies starved quietly, their mothers said, while older siblings died begging for food.”

The world’s richest man did this to the world’s poorest children.

Don’t ever forget.

Fisheries council tightens its belt as funding comes ‘in dribs and drabs’ Delayed federal funding has pushed the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to cancel travel and shift its October meeting online, raising concerns about long-term oversight.

For those that are unaware: the fisheries councils are independent advisory bodies in the United States, but they are funded through NOAA, and are the primary way the public and industry is involved with setting fisheries policies.

I'm not pointing fingers at anybody but I do see #USDA left out of a lot of the reporting on cuts to federal research funding, and USDA funds a LOT of research!!! Food safety! Ag sustainability! Making our food supply chains more resilient!!!

Two fully funded PhD positions at UDel on Climate Disruptions and Food Systems Resilience. Join a great lab to study how shocks to agricultural production reverberate through supply chains and affect food security, nutrition, and livelihoods

Apply by Aug 15

More info: tinyurl.com/UDelFoodShoc...

The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition One professor's reflections on the end of an era, as AI tools such as ChatGPT have murdered the student essay (RIP). Here's why that threatens the future of human cognition—and how to save ourselves.

This is quite good. I’ll add to it that more than anything else, my writing skills were honed over nearly twenty years of student essays, from having the five paragraph style drilled into me in 1993 to finishing my dissertation in 2010. The mass revolt against developing this skill is devastating.

Michelle Obama Was Vilified by the Right. Then Came MAHA. Former Obama White House chef Sam Kass on the politics of food, the dangers of MAHA and what Democrats are missing.

"The idea that you’re going to be more aggressively regulating based on the best science, while you’re wholesale cutting scientific research and gutting the people who are in charge of overseeing the very industry that you’re trying to clamp down on is a joke." www.politico.com/news/magazin...