Category Archives: coastal hazards

Japanese journalists cover Oregon tsunami preparations, responses

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Two journalists from  one of Japan’s leading newspapers visited Oregon’s central coast recently to report on the gradual arrival of debris from the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Aomori prefecture, and how that tragedy has spurred Oregon’s coastal towns to prepare for similar disasters on US shores.

Tomoji Watanabe and Yu Miyaji visited OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and interviewed dozens of coastal officials and residents about lessons learned from the Japanese tsunami.

The pier in question originated in the Japanese town of Misawa, and after more than a year adrift in the Pacific, washed up on Oregon’s Agate Beach last June. Authorities estimated that the “tsunami dock” attracted more than 13,000 visitors to the beach before state contractors cut it apart and hauled it off for disposal.

OSU scientists, including specialists from Oregon Sea Grant, were particularly interested in the thousands of living plants and marine animals – most of them strangers to US shores –  that survived the trans-Pacific voyage. Fearing that the organisms might become invasive if allowed to get loose in the wild, state environmental agencies scraped, incinerated and buried them after scientists had a chance to retrieve samples.

A small segment of the pier has been on display at the HMSC Visitor Center, and a larger piece is expected to be installed in the Visitor Center’s lobby this March to commemorate the second anniversary of the Japanese disaster.

Additional debris from the tsunami is expected to wash up on Pacific Northwest coasts; the state has set up a special phone number, 211, for reports of suspected debris.

Sea-level information workshops planned for south, north coast

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A pair of workshops on sea-level hazards are coming up Oct. 24 and 29 on Oregon’s south and north coast to help local emergency managers, planners and the interested public learn more about sea-level risks and what can be done about them.

Sea-level rise, storm surges and tsunamis will all be covered in the two workshops, organized by Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon Coastal Management program. The purposes is to explore how learning more about the natural hazards posed by sea levels might affect local communities and their decisions: What science tells us, how that information can be used, how communities might respond and what  tools and resources they need.

The first workshop takes place from 1-4 pm Oct. 24 at the Red Lion Hotel, 1313 N. Bayshore Drive, Coos Bay. The second will be held at the same time Oct. 29, at Tillamook Bay Community College rooms 2140215, 4301 Third St., Tillamook.

Both meetings will include presentations on:

  • The science behind global and level sea level rise (Phil Mote, Oregon Climate Change Research Institute)
  • Ocean, atmospheric and tectonic influences on sea levels (Jonathan Allan, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries
  • The effects of changing sea levels on estuaries and wetlands (speaker TBD).

After a question-and-answer session on the science of sea level hazards, a panel of local elected officials, planners, public works and emergency managers will informally discuss how this information can be used in their day-to-day work, what community resources are at risks and what decisions they are making that could be affected by the information.

Both meetings are free and open to the public. For more information, contact either of the workshop coordinators: Oregon Sea Grant’s coastal hazards specialist, Patrick Corcoran, or Jeff Weber, Oregon Coastal Zone Management Program.

Request for proposals: ocean contaminants, marine debris

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Oregon Sea Grant is soliciting research proposals for one-year grants on two topics of high priority to Oregon’s ocean and coast: Water contaminants, and tsunami-related marine debris. The submission deadline is 5 pm Nov. 5, 2012.

Sea Grant  and its citizen advisory council have identified contaminants in Oregon waters – both ocean and freshwater – as an important research issue for the state. The recent and anticipated arrival of marine debris from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami also raises timely research and public engagement questions. As a result, Sea Grant has set aside funding for between one and  four single-year grant proposals addressing either of these issues. The total available funding is $80,000.

This special funding call seeks proposals that apply the best science and an innovative approach to address either: 1) a well-defined coastal or watershed research question addressing contaminants, or 2) research related to tsunami marine debris.

All Oregon Sea Grant research grants must include public outreach and engagement components.

For more information, visit our Website.

Fragment of Japanese dock to anchor tsunami interpretive trail at HMSC

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NEWPORT, Ore. – A section from a huge dock that ripped loose from its moorings in the northern Japanese city of Misawa during the massive earthquake and tsunami in March of 2011 will become part of an exhibit at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, just a few miles from where it washed ashore in early June of this year.

The dock, which became an instant tourist attraction for several weeks, has since been dismantled. But a piece of the huge structure has been saved and will be on display at the HMSC by early next year.

The City of Newport is providing initial funding for the project and Mayor Mark McConnell hopes donations will fill the gaps. When finished, the dock section will be mounted outside of the HMSC Visitor Center, accompanied by educational signage as well as a memorial plaque. The exhibit is being developed by Oregon Sea Grant, which manages the Visitor Center, and will serve as the start of an eventual interpretive trail built along the tsunami evacuation route from the OSU center to higher ground.

“That would certainly be fitting,” said McConnell, who visited Sendai, Japan, last summer. “The devastation we saw in Japan was incredible. You realize when you see it first-hand that you can’t plan or build for an event of that magnitude, but you can prepare for it by educating yourself about the risks and creating strategies for safe evacuation.

“The exhibit will be a reminder that the tragedy in Japan could just as easily happen here,” he added.

Shawn Rowe, an OSU free-choice learning specialist based at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, said the focus of the planned exhibit’s educational effort will be on tsunami awareness, the risk of invasive species from the tsunami debris, and how the dock got here in the first place.

“It is a good opportunity to broaden public awareness about such issues,” said Rowe, who works for Oregon Sea Grant. “This was a unique event. Certainly, materials float over from Japan quite often. But rarely, if ever, have we seen a confluence of circumstances that led to the dock arriving in Newport, Ore.”

Fishing floats, logs and debris arrive on the West Coast from Asia with some regularity, but rarely does a structure this large that had been anchored for years in an inlet in Japan – and thus accumulating local seaweeds and organisms – rip loose and journey across the ocean.

“What was surprising to us is that so many of the plants and animals that were attached to the dock survived the 15-month journey across the Pacific Ocean,” said Jessica Miller, an OSU marine ecologist who has studied the dozens of plant and animal species on the dock. “What we don’t yet know is whether these species have established themselves in local waters with the potential to become invasive.”

Mark Farley, who manages the HMSC Visitor Center for Sea Grant, said the dock section will be delivered to Newport in the next few weeks, and work on the foundation for the display and signage will continue into the early part of 2013.

“Our hope is to have the exhibit open to the public by the anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami next March,” Farley said.

For more information on donating to the Japanese dock exhibit at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, visit the HMSC Visitor Center website , or call Mark Farley at 541-867-0276.

Volunteers sought for tsunami debris monitoring, cleanup

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The new Oregon Marine Debris Team is looking for hundreds of coastal volunteers to keep an eye out for debris from the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami – and to help clean it up.

The team, a partnership of Oregon Sea Grant and four nonprofit groups – CoastWatch, Surfrider Foundation, SOLVE and Washed Ashore – is leading citizen-based efforts to systematically track and clean up tsunami debris that washes up on the Oregon Coast. Volunteers will be asked to systematically monitor, identify and report areas where tsunami debris accumulates, and to participate in cleanup efforts.

Interested coastal residents and visitors can sign up by subscribing to the team’s marine debris notification list and indicate their volunteer interests and geographic areas.

Public agencies, led by Oregon State Parks, have set up debris reporting hotlines, provided receptacles and will collect material too dangerous or bulky for volunteers to handle. The federal government, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced Monday that it would provide $250,000 to the five western states likely to be affected by the tsunami debris (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii). However, at $50,000 per state, the grants are expected to cover only a small fraction of cleaning up however much of the estimated 1.5 million tons of debris drifting across the Pacific winds up on US coasts.

The debris was washed from the Japanese shore by the tsunami that followed the devastating earthquake that hit northern Japan on March 5, 2011, killing thousands and sweeping away an estimated 5 million tons of buildings, fishing vessels and personal belongings. Much of that sank off the Japanese coast – but buoyant items, from fragments of plastic and paper to stray boats and cargo containers, have been floating the Pacific currents ever since, and are beginning to show up on US coastlines.

The budget-strapped West Coast states lack the resources to clean up everything that arrives.The cost of removing the single largest piece of tsunami debris to hit Oregon to date – a large dock that washed ashore last month at Agate Beach on the central Coast – will run just over $84,000, according to Oregon Parks & Recreation, which has hired a contractor to remove and dispose of the dock starting July 30. A small piece will be kept as a memorial to the tsunami victims.

“Cleaning up our beaches relies upon all of us,” said Charlie Plybon, , Surfrider Foundation Oregon Field Manager. “The key to responding to this challenge … lies with educating and activating volunteers.”

The Oregon Marine Debris Team is hoping to recruit enough volunteers to monitor every beach, cove and headland for debris, and to be on call for cleanup alerts in given areas. “Agencies are not able to do that,” Plybon said. “It is up to us, the people who care for our coastline and take responsibility for it, to step up. Our role as nonprofits is to provide the support to make that happen.”

What to do if you find tsunami debris

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The state of Oregon, in coordination with NOAA, Sea Grant and multiple coastal nonprofits, has a new list of resources for people who find – or who are interested in helping clean up – debris that might be associated with last year’s devastating tsunami in Japan.

Coastal residents and visitors are invited to pick up official beach cleanup bags from any state parks office on the coast, and fill them with whatever non-hazardous trash and debris they find when they’re on the beach.   Dozens of debris drop-off stations have been established on the coast, at many state parks and local waste transfer stations.

  • If you spot
    • Debris with living organisms on it
    • Debris that appears hazardous (oil or chemical drums, for instance)
    • Items too large for you to move
  • report it – with date, location, and photos if you can take them – to beach.debris@state.or.us
  • Unusually large items, or those that pose a hazard to navigation, should be reported by calling 211 (or 1-800-SAFENET).
  • Items with markings that might trace them back to inviduals or groups in Japan, or that appear to have personal or monetary value, should be reported to either  211 (1-800-SAFENET) or beach.debris@state.or.us so the state can can make appropriate arrangements to return the items.
  • You can also download a printable sheet of wallet-sized cards with this contact information on it.

If you’d like to volunteer to help report, collect or monitor the beaches for debris, you can sign up online with Surfrider, which will pass the information to the appropriate groups.

Oregon Sea Grant has joined with organizations such as Surfrider, SOLVE and CoastWatch to form the Oregon Marine Debris Team to assist with debris monitoring, identification, cleanup and public information.

Despite storm OSU remains on National Mall

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WASHINGTON, D.C. Day three of the ten-day Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall was cancelled after OSU’s tent and at least nine others were damaged by a massive thunderstorm that swept across the capital on Friday night.

On Saturday morning the 16-foot long plexiglass wave tank, borrowed by OSU from Howard University to demonstrate tsunamis, stood on two tables peeking out from under a frayed blue tarp amid a field of debris. Around it laid bent pieces of metal tent tubing, soggy “Powered by Orange” tee shirts, and muddied posters that describe OSU extension and outreach activities.

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OSU's demonstration area after a severe thunderstorm came through Friday night.

“I was shocked when the festival representative called this morning and said, ‘well, the wave tank is fine but you’ll need you to stay away for the day while we find you a new tent’,” said OSU Director of University Events Shelly Signs. Signs heads up the team of paid staff and volunteers that has traveled from Oregon to demonstrate OSU research and extension activities. These include tsunami education activities, Sea Grant-related surimi and fisheries research, and projects by the 4-H Tech Wizards—an OSU Extension program that provides after-school tech-related activities for underrepresented youth.

The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival was created in 1967 to examine and showcase different aspects of American and global culture. To mark the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s signing of the Morrill Bill that called for the creation of land-grant universities, Smithsonian invited land-grant universities from around the country to set up exhibits that showcase activities connected with their mission. The program, called “Campus and Community“, features exhibits and activities from 28 U.S. land-grant institutions.

By Sunday, OSU’s tent had been replaced and Signs and her team were busy making tsunamis, rolling out surimi and firing off air-propelled rockets. At tables in front of the wave tank, children and parents snapped together Legos trying to create structures that could withstand the six-inch wave the machine generates. OSU researcher Jae Park and his wife stood by a glass-topped freezer that displayed numerous brands of surimi and spoke to festival goers about how the product utilizes parts of fish that were once discarded (Park’s research and his Astoria-based Surimi School got early support from Oregon Sea Grant). On nearby tables children used surimi molds and rolling pins to make artificial crab and pressed shrimp shapes out of clay.

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Smithsonian volunteer and young festival attendees watch to see which structures will withstand the tsunami.

In Reunion Hall, just across from the OSU tent, 4-H Tech Wizards program manager Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas showed one young festival goer how to connect a motor to a solar cell. Behind him teacher Miguel Angel Cholu Hernandez tested the latest batch of air-propelled rockets that had been made at their table.

Despite losing a day, Signs seems happy with the way things are turning out. “People are learning about how to build structures that are less susceptible to tsunamis, they’re learning sustainable food practices and are seeing the great things that the Tech-Wizards are doing,” she said. “Plus we’ve had an opportunity to build community with all of the other land-grant communities that are also participating. I’d say this is a success.”

To see more photos of the event please visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_register/sets/72157630388536296/

(Rhett Register is a former Corvallis reporter and freelancer now living and working in Washington, D.C., where he is a researcher for National Geographic Travel magazine.)

First confirmed tsunami debris hits Oregon shores

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AGATE BEACH – A chunk of concrete and steel that washed ashore Tuesday on this central Oregon coastal beach has been confirmed as a floating dock swept off the coast of Japan by last year’s devastating tsunami.

It is the first confirmed landing of tsunami debris on the Oregon coast. Scientists and governments have been tracking debris in the 15 months since the disaster, and expecting items to begin making landfall on the West Coast this summer.

According to The Oregonian, a plaque on the 66-foot-long section of debris helped the Japanese Consulate in Portland identify it as a dock cut loose in Misawa, a northern Japanese city struck by the powerful tsunami waves on March 11, 2011.

“It’s one of four floating docks washed away by the tsunami, which means there are three more floating somewhere possibly,” said Hirofumi Murabayashi, deputy consul general. “In Oregon this is the first item obviously from the tsunami.”

The consul has turned the matter over to the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation, which has jurisdiction over the beach, to determine what to do about the chunk of debris, which measures 66 feet long by 19 feet wide by 7 feet tall.

Read the entire story in The Oregonian

OSU unveils new maps of Oregon ocean

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Map of sea floor off Cape AragoCORVALLIS – After more than two years of intense field work and digital cartography, researchers have unveiled new maps of the seafloor off Oregon that cover more than half of the state’s territorial waters – a collaborative project that will provide new data for scientists, marine spatial planners, and the fishing industry.

The most immediate benefit will be improved tsunami inundation modeling for the Oregon coast, according to Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University, who led much of the field work.

“Understanding the nature of Oregon’s Territorial Sea is critical to sustaining sport and commercial fisheries, coastal tourism, the future of wave energy, and a range of other ocean-derived ecosystem services valued by Oregonians,” Goldfinger said. “The most immediate focus, though, is the threat posed by a major tsunami.

“Knowing what lies beneath the surface of coastal waters will allow much more accurate predictions of how a tsunami will propagate as it comes ashore,” he added. “We’ve also found and mapped a number of unknown reefs and other new features we’re just starting to investigate, now that the processing work is done.”

The mapping project was a collaborative effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, David Evans and Associations, and Fugro. It was funded by NOAA and the Oregon Department of State Lands.

The primary mapping platform was the vessel Pacific Storm, operated by the OSU Marine Mammal Institute. Oregon-based fishing vessels taking part in Oregon Sea Grant’s Scientist and Fisherman Exchange program – the F/V Michelle Ann, the F/V Delma Ann, and the F/V Miss Linda – assisted with ground truth sampling and video surveys.

NOAA, FEMA urge “Be a Force of Nature”

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Be a Force of Nature - Pledge to Prepare“Be a Force of Nature” is the theme of the first-ever National Severe Weather Preparedness Week, starting this Sunday (Earth Day) and continuing through April 28.

The campaign is a joint effort by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Daily themes will  target public awareness about severe weather hazards and encourage people to get prepared:

  • Monday: Know Your Risk
  • Tuesday: Make a Plan
  • Wednesday: Build a Kit
  • Thursday: Get a NOAA Weather Radio
  • Friday: Be an example for others to follow

Full details – including downloadable posters, media PSAs and emergency preparedness kit checklists – can be found on NOAA’s Weather-Ready Nation Website.

While the effort focuses on hurricanes, tornadoes and other catastrophic storms less common in the Pacific Northwest, Oregonians can still learn from the campaign, according to Patrick Corcoran, Oregon Sea Grant’s coastal hazards specialist.

In this region, coastal storms generally occur from November to March – but recent trends have shown earlier dates for the first storm and later dates for the last storm of the season. And offshore buoys have measured increasingly higher waves during winter storms over the past 30 years. A result has been more impacts by storms on people and infrastructure, from homes to highways.

“Some homes on cliff-backed beaches have found themselves precariously closer to the edge,” said Corcoran. “A few have fallen into the sea. Other properties in lower areas with dune-backed beaches are experiencing larger storm waves, overtopping of shore protection structures, and an overall increase in erosion.”

Corcoran pointed out that although the Northwest is generally spared from tornadoes and hurricane-strength storms, they can happen – and the region is also prone to seismic disasters including earthquakes and tsunamis.

“The steps NOAA recommends to prepare for catastrophic storms make good sense for the types of disasters we in the Northwest face, too,” he said.

Learn more: