We all have preferences about how society should be ordered, and whether we believe in hierarchy and individualism or are egalitarian and value community, those cultural values shape our reception to science and communication about science. Listen to a two-part interview with Dan Kahan of Yale Law School, conducted by Joe Cone of Oregon Sea Grant, part of Communicating Climate Change, a series of discussions intended primarily for those serious about doing just that.
Category Archives: Oregon Sea Grant
Glowing shrimp? Not to worry, say Sea Grant specialists
NEWPORT, Ore. – Some Oregonians who recently purchased pink shrimp at the coast or at large retail stores have called Oregon State University’s Lincoln County Extension Office over the past few days to report a rather unusual trait.
Their seafood was glowing in the dark.
What sounds other-worldly is actually surprisingly common, according to Kaety Hildenbrand, an OSU Sea Grant Extension specialist who works with coastal fishing communities. Marine bacteria can cause glowing or luminescence when they grow on seafood products – a trait that may be exacerbated by the adding of salt during processing.
The important thing to remember, she said, is that “glowing” seafood does not present a food safety problem, nor does it reflect mishandling during processing.
Sea Grant Summer Scholars present their work
Oregon Sea Grant’s first class of undergraduate Summer Scholars will present their projects and research in an August 11 symposium at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.
The symposium runs from 1 to 3 pm in the Guin Library Seminar Room.
Sea Grant’s Summer Scholars program, launched this year, provides undergraduates with hands-on experience and training in marine science and resource management. Students are placed with Oregon resource agencies for the summer, assigned to specific research or outreach programs, and trained in subjects such as ecosystem-based management, professional and scientific communication, field-based scientific methods, natural resource policy development, and roles of federal, state and local governments in natural resource management.
The scholars who will be presenting their work on Aug. 11 are:
- AnnaRose Adams, Oregon State University, assigned to the Oregon Sea Grant program office on the OSU campus, under the mentorship of program director Steve Brandt and Julie Risien.
- Daniel Brusa, SUNY-Rockland Community College, New York, who is assigned to the Lincoln County Sea Grant Extention team in Newport, under the mentorship of Extension faculty member Kaety Hildenbrand.
- Ian Heller, Vassar College, New York, assigned to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s West Coast Ecology Division at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, under the mentorship of Ted Dewitt.
- Phillip Sanchez, University of Florida-Gainesville, assigned to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s West Coast Ecology Division at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, under the mentorship of Jim Power.
- Katie Wrubel, California State University-Monterey Bay, assigned to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Charleston office, under the mentorship of Scott Groth.
Sea Grant science educators honored for leadership
Two Oregon State University leaders in science education have received the John Cotton Dana Award for Leadership from the American Association of Museums.
John Falk and Lynn Dierking, Oregon Sea Grant professors in the OSU Department of Science and Mathematics Education, received this award, which is made only on occasion, and has not been presented since 2002. The honor is named after a progressive museum leader who founded the Newark Museum in 1909.
It was given to Falk and Dierking in recognition of “those outside the museum field who exhibit outstanding leadership and promote the educational responsibility and capacity of museums.” Falk and Dierking are both advocates and national leaders for the concept of “free-choice” learning, which recognizes that much of what people know about science is learned outside the classroom, by reading, going to museums, dealing with life issues, or other activities.
Two Oregon Sea Grant publications win Apex awards
Oregon Sea Grant has won two awards in the 2010 Apex Awards for Publication Excellence: a Grand Award (first prize) in the Brochures, Manuals, and Reports category for The Oregon Rain Garden Guide; and an Award of Excellence in the Design and Illustration category for the Oregon Sea Grant 2010-2013 Strategic Plan.
Of the Rain Garden Guide, judges commented: “This well thought-out and well-done guide offers practical advice on building rain gardens to capture, treat, and use storm water runoff. Excellent use of photos, illustrations, charts, and typography reinforce the clear, easy-reading text.”
The Oregon Rain Garden Guide was written by Robert Emanuel and Derek Godwin of Oregon Sea Grant Extension, and Candace Stoughton of East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. It was designed by Patricia Andersson and edited by Rick Cooper, both of Oregon Sea Grant. Other contributors include (alphabetically) Neil Bell, Angela Boudro, Heidi Brill, Teresa Huntsinger, Joy Jones, and Linda McMahan.
The Oregon Sea Grant 2010-2013 Strategic Plan was written and edited by Oregon Sea Grant staff and designed by Patricia Andersson.
There were 3,711 entries in 127 categories in this year’s Apex competition, 100 of which received Grand Awards and 1,132 of which received Awards of Excellence.
Seen any jumbo squid? Scientists want to know
CORVALLIS – Scientists tracking the northward migration of Humboldt squid into Oregon’s offshore waters are enlisting commercial fishermen to help them keep count of the tentacled predators – and what they’re eating.
Led by marine fisheries ecologist Selina Heppell, a professor in Oregon State University’s department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and graduate student Sarikka Attoe, the team is attempting to learn more about the squid, whose historic range has followed the Humboldt current in the eastern Pacific waters from the southernmost tip of South America to California.
Since 2002, the squid – Dosidicus gigas, also known as the jumbo squid – have been found in increasing numbers in the waters off Oregon, Washington and as far north as Alaska. Normally deep-diving, the animals are turning up in shallower coastal waters, sometimes in very large numbers. Aggressive feeders, they are known for swarming feeding frenzies when they come upon prey (usually small fish, crustaceans and other squid).
With funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through Oregon Sea Grant, Heppell is attempting to map the distribution of catches of jumbo squid off the Oregon coast, identify correlations between squid catch and oceanographic variables, and determine what the squid are eating as they pass through Oregon’s offshore waters – particularly whether they’re dining on such commercially fished species as hake and salmon.
Sea Grant director to take part in “rapid response” study of Gulf fish ecology
Stephen Brandt
CORVALLIS, Ore. – An Oregon State University researcher who leads the Oregon Sea Grant program will take part in a rapid response team studying how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is affecting fish and other marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Science Foundation has announced that the team, including OSU’s Stephen Brandt, will receive $200,000 to support a week-long research cruise this September to collect data about the conditions of fish in the northern Gulf. The new information will be compared with baseline data the team has recorded in multiple cruises of the same region dating back to 2003.Funds come from the NSF’s RAPID program, which supports quick-response research into the effects of natural and man-made disasters and other urgent situations.
Brandt, the director of the Oregon Sea Grant program at OSU, is an oceanographer and freshwater scientist with a long history of studying fish ecology around the world, including the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and the Adriatic Sea. Before coming to OSU in 2009, he was director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Michigan.
He is part of a research team that has conducted seven research cruises in the northern Gulf of Mexico since 2003, collecting detailed data about temperature, salinity, oxygen, phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish, and analyzing the effects of human activity on marine fish ecology. The result is what Brandt calls “an extremely valuable data set” to compare the possible effects of the BP oil spill on the pelagic ecosystem of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The team also plans to make its historical data available to other Gulf researchers via the NSF’s Biological and Chemical Oceanography Database.
“We’re proposing to conduct the new cruise in September because that’s the same time of year when we conducted our previous studies,” Brandt said. “That will allow us to compare the new data with comparable periods from past years, which should give us a good picture of how the spill is affecting the marine environment.”
Tsunami structure gets its test – in miniature
Officials from the coastal Oregon town of Cannon Beach visited Oregon State University’s Hinsdale Wave Research Center this week to get a first-hand look at how a proposed new city hall and tsunami survival center might work.
Researcher Dan Cox showed off a scale model of the structure – and all of downtown Cannon Beach – and then pounded it with scale-model waves in one of the Hinsdale Center’s massive wave-generating tanks.
Cannon Beach is one of many coastal communities trying to come up with plans to save lives and property should the Oregon Coast be struck by a tsunami. Scientists say it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when” – and recent studies suggest that the region is overdue.
Along with warning systems, evacuation routes and public education, Cannon Beach is hoping to get federal funds to build a new, $4 million city hall that would stand on 15-foot-high tsunami-resistant pilings and provide safe refuge for people unable to evacuate the downtown area. Their hope is that by putting city services in a building that can survive a tsunami, they would be better prepared to manage the emergency response to such a disaster.
It would be the first such structure in the United States; the Japanese have built similar structures, but none has yet been tested in an actual tsunami.
Accompanying the Cannon Beach delegation to OSU was Patrick Corcoran, Oregon Sea Grant’s coastal hazards specialist, who has been working with coastal communities to help them develop and improve tsunami disaster planning.
“Every community from Cape Mendocino in California to Vancouver Island in Canada is vulnerable to some extent to the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunamis,” said Corcoran, “This is arguably the greatest recurring natural hazard in the lower 48 states. Our cities are not engineered to deal with it and our residents are not prepared for it. We need evacuation routes, assembly sites, public education and outreach. And in some places, we need vertical evacuation structures. The only way to potentially save thousands of lives is through more education and better engineering.”
Sea Grant has supported a number of research projects at the Hinsdale Center, including a current effort by civil engineering professor Dr. Harry Yeh to better understand how the shape of the seafloor immediately offshore can amplify the effects of big waves on specific communities.
Sea Grant wave research and outreach featured by NOAA
An Oregon Sea Grant-supported researcher’s discovery that record-breaking wave heights have the potential to do more damage to the Oregon coast than rising sea levels – and a Sea Grant Extension specialist’s efforts to help make coastal communities more resilient to such hazards – are featured on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Web site.
The feature spotlights the work of Peter Ruggiero, an assistant professor at Oregon State University, who recently published the results of his Sea Grant-sponsored study in the journal Coastal Engineering. Ruggiero’s team found that while all waves off the Oregon Coast are taller on average than they were 35 years ago, the highest waves during winter storms are gaining height faster than the low waves of summer.
That could mean bad news for coastal communities and their residents, says Patrick Corcoran, the program’s Astoria-based coastal hazards specialist, who said, “Increased development on borderline sites along the Oregon coastline puts homes and other stationary structures at risk.”
The feature story (available in full here) is one of several illustrating the accomplishments of NOAA and its sub-agencies – including Sea Grant – in four key thematic areas:
- Protecting lives and property
- Promoting economic vitality
- Conserving and restoring natural resources
- Monitoring and understanding our changing planet.
Sea Grant names three finalists for Extension leader post
Oregon Sea Grant has named three finalists for the post of Sea Grant Extension program leader, being vacated by the retirement of Jay Ramussen. The candidates, who have been invited to the Oregon State University campus in May for interviews and public presentations, are:
- Professor Conner Bailey, Department of Agriculture and Rural Sociology, Auburn University
- Dr. Tom DeGomez, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson
- James Humphreys, Fisheries Director, Americas for the Marine Stewardship Council, Seattle, Washington
Details about the candidates and their interview schedules are posted on the Sea Grant Web site . We hope to offer an online video feed of their public presentations for those unable to attend; when the video links are available, they will be listed there as well.
Ramussen, who has served as the program’s Associate Director as well as leading a 17-member Sea Grant Extension team since 1996, formally retired earlier this year but has been serving on an interim basis until his successor is named. Earlier this month, he was the recipient of OSU Extension’s Alberta Johnson award for exemplary leadership.
Sea Grant Extension is the public outreach and engagement arm of Oregon Sea Grant, bringing the resources of research and higher education to bear on real-world issues important to those who live near, earn their livelihoods from, and care about the state’s ocean and coast. Extension faculty and staff work on the Oregon coast and across the state to address critical marine and coastal issues. They include include community-based agents, subject-matter specialists and educators based at OSU’s coastal research stations, in county Extension offices and on the main OSU campus in Corvallis.