Luke Ghallahorne
2026 WCOA Fellow Blog
I am an early-career biologist who is very interested in using oceanographic models to understand ecological interactions. I completed my master’s degree in biology at Western Washington University last summer, where I worked in the Larval Lab with Dr. Shawn Arellano. My thesis project used hydrodynamic model output from the Salish Sea Model (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) to drive a biophysical transport model for Olympia oyster larvae that I and a previous graduate student built entirely in R. I was lucky enough to work with local tribes and the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve during my thesis and to have my work inform native oyster restoration in the region. Sometime soon, my model will be available for practitioners to use themselves to help with site selection and improving understanding transport mechanisms that connect oyster populations.
This year, I am thrilled to be working with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) alongside the Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction (CMOP) team. I have loved digging deeper into oceanography principles and finding ways to use environmental data for meaningful impacts. So far, my time has been split between visualizing output from CMOP’s Virtual Columbia River model and analyzing daily statistics from the program’s long-term observation network.
On the modeling side, my first project was to prepare daily model forecasts to be mapped on the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) Visualization System’s Data Explorer. I am greatly looking forward to further collaboration with the NANOOS team. Since then, I have been updating maps and climatology plots for CMOP’s Climatological Atlas in preparation for a new version of the Virtual Columbia River. I have also been developing analyses of daily physical and biogeochemical measurements from CMOP’s extensive observations of the Columbia River estuary and plume, which are crucial to the management of salmon fisheries along the river. Our goal is to produce user-friendly datasets and high-quality climatologies of important estuarine characteristics like temperature, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll concentrations.
I am looking forward to expanding my collaborations and working more directly with Tribal resource researchers and managers. Through CRITFC commission meetings and joining the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Data Project (ITMD), I have learned so much already about the priorities and struggles of Tribal governments. I am so excited to contribute to and learn from their work throughout my time as a WCOA fellow. It has been incredibly rewarding to work with the wonderful folks at CMOP. I will be presenting some of my early results on inter-annual variability in estuary hypoxia at the OR Chapter of the American Fisheries SocietyAFS annual meeting in Portland, OR, this May, and I cannot wait for more opportunities to share my work and engage with the west coast research community.
