Category Archives: Oregon Sea Grant

Sea Grant partnership wins Presidential award

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Coastal America Logo

The Ocean Conservation and Education Alliance Northwest (OCEAN), a partnership of Oregon Sea Grant and several other coastal groups, will receive a 2009 Coastal America Partnership Award for outstanding efforts to restore and protect the coastal environment.

The Presidential award represents the highest level national recognition for  outstanding  multi-agency, multi-stakeholder collaborations that pool resources from many sources to accomplish coastal restoration, preservation, protection and education projects.

The award was announced on Nov. 6 by the Coastal America Partnership, an action-oriented, collaborative partnership of federal agencies, state and local governments, and private organizations. The partners work together to protect, preserve, and restore our nation’s coasts, accomplishing tasks that no one group could accomplish alone.

OCEAN is receiving the award for “efforts to bring together a network of innovative educators … to engage students and inspire ocean science literacy,” according to Coastal America director Virginia K. Tippie.

OCEAN started three years ago as a joint effort by Oregon Sea Grant’s marine education program at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Lincoln County School District to help make local k-12 students among the most ocean-literate in the country.

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Oregon Sea Grant-funded tsunami research featured in NSF “Discoveries”

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“One of our experiments found that small seawalls cause a skyward deflection of an incoming tsunami wave, which consequently reduces wave energy and the force on structures directly landward of the wall. … As seawalls are inexpensive and easy to build, they are a sustainable tsunami defense measure applicable for most coastal communities.”

So writes Oregon State University (OSU) graduate student Mary Beth Oshnack in her article, “Building Tsunami-resistant Cities,” in the National Science Foundation’s online news feature, Discoveries. Oshnack has been working with Oregon Sea Grant researcher Dan Cox at OSU’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, part of the National Science Foundation’s  (NSF) Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES.

Prepare now to survive a West Coast tsunami

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Pat CorcoranASTORIA, Ore. – Two weeks after tsunamis in Sumatra and American Samoa initiated by powerful earthquakes killed hundreds of people, a growing number of Oregonians are wondering how people living along the West Coast will fare when a large – and possibly overdue – quake shakes our own soil.

“Unfortunately, our fascination with the physical phenomena eclipses our interest in preparing to survive our next big earthquake and tsunami,” said Patrick Corcoran, coastal hazards outreach specialist with the Oregon Sea Grant program at Oregon State University.

(Read more …)

Podcast features Nobel economics winner

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Elinor OstromCongratulations to Elinor Ostrom, the Indiana University political scientist who is one of two recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize for economics.

Ostrom, known for her work on the management of common resources, is the first woman to win a Nobel in economics.

A year ago, Dr. Ostrom sat down with Oregon Sea Grant’s Joe Cone to talk about the challenges of communicating about climate change. The two-part interview, in which she discusses system-based approaches to thinking and talking about the resilience of social and economic systems, is available on our Communicating Climate Change podcast. The episode also includes a link to her 2007 National Academy of Sciences article, “A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas.”

Ostrom is among several leading social scientists interviewed for the podcast over the past year and a half.

Chinese visit Oregon to discuss marine invasives

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Spartina_alternifloraRepresentatives from China’s Fujian Academy of Science-Forestry-Institute of Ecology and Environment are visiting Oregon this week to confer with an Oregon Sea Grant specialist on methods of fighting the spread of an invasive grass species.

The grass, Spartina alterniflora (also known as cordgrass), is native to the east coast of North America. The grass was introduced into a Fujian estuary in 1982 and has spread rapidly. Spartina invasions have also occurred on the west coast of the U.S. In China, the fast-spreading grass threatens the survival of native mangrove forests.

In 2007 Oregon Sea Grant Extension agent Sam Chan and a team of researchers, educators, and resource managers from Oregon, Washington and Florida visited Fujian, a province about half the size of Oregon, on the southeastern coast of China. This week, the Chinese team is visiting OSU.

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Public invited to view great white shark dissection today

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Great white shark thaws for necropsy

A 12-foot white shark—popularly known as a great white shark—that died in August after becoming entangled in the ropes of a crab pot, will become the focus of scientists this week during its dissection at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center.

The public is invited to view the necropsy, which will be performed over two days.

“It is a shame that the shark became entangled in the ropes and died, but the specimen still has a great deal of scientific and educational value,” said William Hanshumaker, the OSU center’s marine education specialist, who is coordinating the necropsy. “Top predators such as this are difficult to study and we don’t know a lot about where they migrate or breed.”

Hanshumaker, who also is a faculty member for Sea Grant Extension at OSU, will remove the shark from the freezer today (Thursday, October 1, 2009) and put it on public display in a roped-off section of the HMSC’s Visitor’s Center beginning at 10 a.m. Visitors may observe the shark via video camera in the Hennings Auditorium—including necropsy activities, which begin late this afternoon.

At 4:30 p.m. today, Dr. Brion Benninger, of the Neurological Sciences Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, will remove the shark’s spinal accessory nerve, where it will be used in OHSU neurological studies.

Tomorrow (Friday, October 2) a series of procedures is planned. Wade Smith, a doctoral student at OSU specializing in shark studies, will conduct measurements of the shark beginning at 11 a.m., and discuss his findings with a fishery biology class taught by OSU professor Scott Heppell. At 1 p.m., OSU students from two classes will examine the shark and hear experts present information on shark diversity, the white shark’s biology and movements, its unique features, and conservation issues.

At 2 p.m., Tim Miller-Morgan of OSU will examine the shark for external parasites, and at 2:30 p.m., Hanshumaker will measure the animal’s teeth and bite impression. At 3 p.m., Smith will conclude the dissection by collecting biological materials, the vertebra, muscle tissue, the dorsal fin and teeth—all of which have scientific value.

“There are researchers from throughout the country who are interested in what we’re doing here and have requested sample materials,” Hanshumaker said. “This also is an opportunity for the public to observe first-hand this unique creature and how scientists conduct research and share information.”

Samples from the white shark will be sent to: Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station; Alaska Department of Fish and Game; University of California-Santa Cruz; California State University-Long Beach; Monterey Bay Aquarium; and Nova Southeastern University.

The samples will provide data for studies ranging from genetics to toxicology, to age and growth data.

(Edited from a news release written by Mark Floyd, OSU News Service, and published online Wednesday, September 30, at democratherald.com)

(photo by Julie Howard, HMSC)

Pacific tsunami highlights need to prepare

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The tsunami that struck American Samoa this week – and prompted a brief warning on the Oregon coast – illustrates the need for coastal tsunami preparedness, and how far most of the tsunami-prone world has to go toward developing an effective warning and response system.

This CBS News report on the science of tsunamis includes a good animation of how tsunamis occur, along with commentary by Dawn Wright, Oregon State University geosciences professor. National Public Radio, meanwhile, reported on progress toward preparedness in the seismically active Pacific Rim since the devastating tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004. “The biggest challenge … remains keeping people aware and knowledgeble about this hazard so that they strike, people do the right thing, ” said Charles McCreery, director of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

In Oregon, Sea Grant’s Pat Corcoran is among those working to make coastal communities and their residents aware of what to do should a tsunami strike our coast:

For more information about tsunamis and preparedness, watch the Oregon Sea Grant video “Reaching Higher Ground.”

NOAA highlights Oregon Sea Grant’s work on climate change communications

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It is a common belief that if coastal resource managers and other communicators could just provide the public with information, people would take appropriate actions. But social scientists conducting research for the past 50 years have found this assumption riddled with misconceptions and are shedding light on how communications and outreach can more effectively influence behavior.

—”Helping Managers Communicate Climate Change in Oregon,” Coastal Services magazine, September/October 2009

Among those who are “shedding light on how communications and outreach can more effectively influence behavior,” particularly with regard to climate change, is Joe Cone, assistant director of Oregon Sea Grant. Cone believes that “understanding more about how social science relates to climate science will help us all do our work better and help communities prepare.”

In addition to the Coastal Services article, Cone’s work in this field is featured in several Oregon Sea Grant publications and podcasts.