In the spring semester we travel to the Pacific Northwest, focusing on the Oregon and Washington coasts. We fly to Seattle and spend the first two nights along Elliott Bay, with a clear view of the mountain ranges meeting the waterfront. To examine the complexity of West Coast fisheries management issues, we visit Fishermen's Terminal, home of America's largest fishing fleet. We travel to the Port of Tacoma to see one of the most efficient container ship ports in the country, and head up the Columbia River to the Bonneville Dam, near Portland. Traveling out to Astoria, Oregon, we bunk aboard the Lightship Columbia, at the Columbia River Maritime Museum. We stand where Lewis and Clark first saw the Pacific in 1805. We discuss science, policy and environmental issues relative to the pivotal Columbia River Basin. We then proceed down the coast, stopping at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We examine coastal sites along the vast Oregon Island Refuge system. Our host facility, the University of Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, is located in the Dungeness crab and salmon fishing village of Charleston, on the shores of Southern Oregon's Coos Bay. From this base we continue to explore the history, science and policy of the Pacific Northwest, as we visit the striking South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Oregon Dunes National Seashore and the magnificent intertidal rocky reefs of purple sea urchins and green sea anemones at Cape Arago, where thousands of California sea lions are wintering at the time of our visit. Aboard the vessel Betty Kay, we experience Coos Bay and the mighty Pacific, providing direct comparisons to our explorations of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.