Oregon Sea Grant Communications has won two awards in this year’s Hermes Creative Awards competition: a Gold Award for the summer 2013 issue of Confluence magazine, and an Honorable Mention for the online video A Big Change.
For more information about the Hermes Creative Awards, please visit http://www.hermesawards.com
Albacore tuna caught off the Oregon shore after the Fukushima Daiichi power station in Japan was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake had slightly elevated levels of radioactivity but the increase has been minute, according to a newly published study.
In fact, you would have to consume more than 700,000 pounds of the fish with the highest radioactive level – just to match the amount of radiation the average person is annually exposed to in everyday life through cosmic rays, the air, the ground, X-rays and other sources, the authors say.
Results of the study are being published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
“You can’t say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk,” said Delvan Neville, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. “But these trace levels are too small to be a realistic concern.
“A year of eating albacore with these cesium traces is about the same dose of radiation as you get from spending 23 seconds in a stuffy basement from radon gas, or sleeping next to your spouse for 40 nights from the natural potassium-40 in their body,” he added. “It’s just not much at all.”
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Oregon Sea Grant is pleased and proud to announce that its Communications team has won three 2014 Communicator Awards:
1. Award of Excellence for Dump Station PSA, in the Online Video-Public Service Category
2. Award of Distinction for Climate Field Notes: Insights from a NOAA Sea Grant Network Project, in the Publication-Special Edition category
3. Award of Distinction for Oregon Sea Grant Strategic Plan 2014-2107, in the Publication-Overall Design category
According to the Communicator Awards’ website:
The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive, and audio. This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.
The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. Please visit aiva.org for a full member list and more information.
For more information about the Communicator Awards, please visit www.communicatorawards.com.
Congratulations to everyone involved in producing these fine publications and videos!
A new publication from Oregon Sea Grant, Climate Field Notes, distills the results of a multi-year, multi-state 
project funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP).
Oregon Sea Grant led this project, which used a risk-communication framework to help coastal communities respond to the effects of a changing climate. Climate Field Notes documents the results of projects in eight states, including Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.
The report includes discussion of social science methodologies, definitions and usefulness of resilience, the roles of leadership and boundary organizations, user-centered communication approaches, and lessons learned from practitioners in the field.
Primary authors of the report are Joe Cone, Pat Corcoran, Miriah Russo Kelly, and Kirsten Winters.
You can download Climate Field Notes here.
Oregon State University will receive funds that will help the West Coast’s shellfish industry in its fight against ocean acidification, thanks largely to the efforts of Oregon state Senator Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose). Receipt of these funds will give a critical boost to Oregon State University’s and the shellfish industry’s efforts to reduce the negative impacts of ocean acidification on shellfish production.
House Bill 5008 allocated $250,000 to Oregon State University. A portion of the funds will be used to continue OSU’s efforts to improve the resilience of oyster to ocean acidification through its selective breeding program at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. The remaining funds will be dedicated to OSU’s collaboration with industry leaders at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery (see “The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Acid Tests” in the current issue of Confluence) on Netarts Bay as they continue to identify better ways to manage the negative effects of ocean acidification on shellfish larvae.
You can read the rest of this story here.
Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Ore., says millions of dead North Pacific krill have washed ashore recently between Newport and Eureka, Calif. He says it’s the largest die-off he can recall in recent history.
North Pacific krill primarily live on the eastern side of the Pacific, between southern California and southern Alaska. They’re typically found along the continental shelf, Peterson says. The shrimp-like crustaceans are an important source of food for salmon and other species of fish, birds and marine mammals.
Joe Tyburczy, a researcher with the California Sea Grant Extension office and a former Oregon Sea Grant Knauss Fellow, says the culprit could be hypoxia. Indeed, oceanographic cruises along the northern California coast found lower oxygen levels than usually seen in Pacific Northwest waters. “If it is hypoxia, there’s a possibility of implications for other species like crab,” Tyburczy says.
Another possibility, Peterson says, is that the shrimp were victims of unfriendly weather conditions during their mating cycle, and were driven to shore by high winds.
For the moment, Peterson and Tyburczy are asking that the public keep them informed of any more dead krill sightings. Peterson can be reached at 541-867-0201; Tyburczy at 707-443-8369.
An Oregon Sea Grant publication, Mental Models Interviewing for More-Effective Communication, has won a Gold Award in the “Publications/Handbook” category of the 2013 Hermes Creative Awards.
Hermes Creative Awards is an international competition for creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, and design of traditional and emerging media. Administered by the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals (www.amcpros.com), the Hermes Creative Awards were created to recognize outstanding work in the industry. Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.
There were about 5,600 entries from the U.S. and throughout the world in this year’s competition, with about 19 percent of entries receiving Gold Awards.
Written by Joe Cone and Kirsten Winters, Mental Models Interviewing is intended to help professionals such as agency officials, university outreach/extension specialists, and social science researchers interview more effectively by answering the questions “What am I listening for?” and “How am I listening?” It’s one of several publications in Oregon Sea Grant Communications’ “Public Science Communication Research & Practice” series. You can find it online here.
The latest issue of Audubon, the magazine of the National Audobon Society, reports that in the 1970s an Alaskan high school science teacher purchased red-legged frogs from a supply house in the Pacific Northwest. Once the amphibians were no longer needed, the educator released them. Four decades later, studies show that frogs that have decimated local Alaskan amphibian populations have genetic ties to those found in Washington’s Columbia Basin. …
Oregon Sea Grant Extension specialist Sam Chan, a biologist who researches invasive species at Oregon State University, is leading a collaborative project with U.S. and Canadian researchers to educate teachers about the dangers of letting aliens loose. In one survey of nearly 2,000 teachers, Chan’s team found that schools had released dozens of well-known invasive species, like crayfish, waterweeds, mosquito fish, and red-eared slider turtles (above).
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Oregon State University has been chosen to lead a project to design and build as many as three new coastal research vessels, the first multi-ship expansion of the National Science Foundation’s academic research fleet since the 1970s, and one intended to boost the marine science research capabilities of the United States.
The new vessels, which could take a decade to design, build and equip, will become part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, the nationwide program which provides research-capable ships to universities which could not afford to build and own the vessels themselves in order to advance the nation’s marine science capacity.
OSU initially will receive nearly $3 million to coordinate the design phase of the project – and if funds are appropriated for all three vessels, the total grant is projected to reach $290 million over 10 years. The first phase of the project is scheduled to begin early this year. The final number of ships constructed, and where the vessels will be berthed, will be determined by the NSF based on geographic scientific requirements and availability of funding.
If all three vessels are built, it is likely that one each would be positioned on the East Coast, West Coast and Gulf Coast, officials say. As part of its proposal to lead the effort, OSU proposed to be the operator of the first vessel.
Distributing the vessels geographically allows scientists from all over the country to book research cruise time from locations nearest to the ocean and coastal areas they are studying.
The university now operates the R/V Oceanus, which replaced the R/V Wecoma when it was retired from service last year and sent away to be scrapped. Both vessels dated to the mid 1970s, and the Oceanus is expected to be ready for retirement about the time the new research vessels become available.
A project team led by Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences will finalize the design for the 175-foot long, technically enhanced Regional Class ships, select a shipyard, oversee construction, and coordinate the system integration, testing, commissioning and acceptance, and transition to operations.
“These will be floating, multi-use laboratories that are flexible and can be adapted for different scientific purposes, yet are more seaworthy and environmentally ‘green’ than previous research vessels,” said Mark Abbott, dean of the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “These ships will be used to address critical issues related to climate change, ocean circulation, natural hazards, human health, and marine ecosystems.”
OSU vice president for research Rick Spinrad, who previously directed research programs for the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the new vessels would “revitalize and transform” coastal ocean science in the United States.
“Many of the most pressing issues facing our oceans are in these coastal regions, including acidification, hypoxia, tsunami prediction, declining fisheries, and harmful algal blooms,” Spinrad said. “Because of their flexibility, these new vessels will attract a broad range of users and will become ideal platforms to training early-career scientists and mariners.”
The project had the support of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Office, noted OSU President Ed Ray, who said the university will benefit from the process long before the first ship hits the water in 2019 or 2020.
The successful OSU proposal was submitted to the National Science Foundation by Clare Reimers, an oceanography professor, and Demian Bailey, the university’s marine superintendent. As part of that submission, OSU proposed to be the operator of the first vessel. Additional operating institutions will be determined once the total number of vessels to be built is known.
“The National Science Foundation hasn’t authorized a multi-ship project since the 1970s,” Bailey said, “and these are likely the only ships scheduled by NSF to be built during the next decade – so this is a big deal. The endurance and size of the new ships will be similar to that of Oceanus and Wecoma but they will be much more efficient and have far greater scientific capacity and flexibility.”
Washington state, the leading US producer of farmed shellfish, this week launched a 42-step plan to reduce ocean acidification. The initiative — detailed in a report by a governor-appointed panel of scientists, policy-makers and shellfish industry representatives — marks the first US state-funded effort to tackle ocean acidification, a growing problem for both the region and the globe.
The state governor Christine Gregoire, says she will allocate $3.3 million to back the panel’s priority recommendations.
“Washington is clearly in the lead with respect to ocean acidification,” says Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As growing carbon dioxide gas emissions have dissolved into the world’s oceans, the average acidity of the waters has increased by 30% since 1750. Washington, which produces farmed oysters, clams and mussels, is particularly vulnerable to acidification, for two reasons: seasonal, wind-driven upwelling events bring low-pH waters from the deep ocean towards the shore, and land-based nutrient runoff from farming fuels algal growth, which also lowers pH.
Read the full story in Nature.