Category Archives: Oregon Sea Grant

HMSC Visitor Center launches new Web site

Posted on by
HMSC Visitor Center Web site

HMSC Visitor Center Web site

Planning your next visit to the Central Oregon Coast? Looking for classes you and your children can take to learn more about the ocean and coast? Or maybe you’re just curious about the fascinating creatures that live in the briny deep …

You’ll find all that and more at the brand-new HMSC Visitor Center Web site.

A year in the making, the new site has everything Visitor Center fans might expect – hours of operation, directions, previews of exhibits and programs, a full schedule of Sea Grant marine education programs, classes and camps for kids, families and teachers – and lots more.

You’ll find a new section featuring the popular Oregon Coast Quests adventure activity and a Critter Corner with photos and facts about some of the hundreds of marine animals in our collection. Ask A Scientist gives you a chance to get answers to your questions about the Oregon Coast. And the Fish Health Corner provides a peek behind the scenes at what it takes to keep a world-class aquarium running and its animal residents healthy.

The Visitor Center is managed by Oregon Sea Grant as a central part of the program’s mission to help people understand, rationally use, and conserve marine and coastal resources.

Coastal forums focus on wave energy

Posted on by

Three community forums next week will give residents of the central Oregon coast an opportunity to learn about and discuss the prospect of wave energy development in their region.

Co-sponsored by the Lincoln County Commission, Oregon Sea Grant qand the new Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, the meetings will take place:

  • Monday, August 24  at 6 pm at the Yachats Commons, 441 Highway 101, Yachats.
  • Tuesday, August 25 at 6  pm in the Lincoln City Council Chambers, City Hall, 801 SW Hwy 101, Lincoln City.
  • Wednesday, August 26 at 6 pm in the auditorium at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, 2030 Marine Science Drive, South Beach, Newport.

Read more and download the meeting agenda  …

Sea Grant, NOAA offer teacher workshop

Posted on by

NOAA-OEScience teachers in grades 6-12 are invited to take part in the first of a two-part professional development workshop series based on NOAA’s “Learning Ocean Science through Ocean Exploration” curriculum.

The workshop, presented by NOAA and Oregon Sea Grant, will run from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

This workshop prepares teachers to bring the excitement of current ocean science discoveries to students using the Learning Ocean Science through Ocean Exploration curriculum, CD, and the Ocean Explorer Web site.

The second workshop will be held in spring 2010. Educators who attend both full-day workshops will receive a $100 stipend. Advance registration is required and space is limited. The registration deadline is Oct. 23.

Download registration materials here.

Celebrate fisheries at HMSC

Posted on by

oregon-fisheries-dayThe HMSC Visitor Center and the Oregon Coast Aquarium join forces on Aug. 16 to celebrate Oregon Fishery Day, a chance for visitors to learn more about Oregon’s tuna, salmon and sablefish industries.

See fishing gear, talk to fishermen, try on a survival suit and taste some samples!

The Visitor Center is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is free (although your donations to support our programs are appreciated); admission to the Oregon Coast Aquarium is at the usual ticket prices.

Download a .pdf flyer about the event here.

Bacterial pollution affects Oregon beaches

Posted on by

Oregon’s beaches are relatively clean by national standards, but they show sporadic hot spots of bacterial pollution at some popular destinations.

So concludes a study led by Oregon Sea Grant Extension agent Frank Burris.

“It’s definitely human-related,” Burris said. “It’s a significant problem. It’s really Oregon’s biggest beach problem.”

Read the entire article.

Oregon Sea Grant’s Rob Emanuel, writing in his own blog, offers some tips for coastal visitors and property owners for reducing their contribution to the problem.

Gear Retrieval Project Creates Jobs

Posted on by

marine-debris-projectOregon Sea Grant’s early involvement with a pilot project to retrieve lost crab pots helped lay the groundwork for a $699,000 NOAA grant that will hire commercial fishermen to clean up 180 metric tons of abandoned gear off the Oregon coast.

The 2009 Gear Retrieval Project, announced last week by NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco during a visit to Newport, will employ fishermen during the off-season. Working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the fishermen will locate and remove discarded crab pots, fishing nets and other marine debris that can  trap and kill marine mammals and fish and endanger fishing activities.

In 2006, Sea Grant collaborated with commerical fishing groups and the Oregon Crab Commission to test whether local fishermen could effectively locate and retrieve lost crab pots. In their first two test runs, fishermen found and hauled in nearly 60 crab pots and more than 600 feet of abandoned trawl cable.

The new gear retrieval project is among $7 million in coastal habitat restoration projects NOAA is funding in Oregon under the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Read more about NOAA’s stimulus act projects here.

Another El Nino year

Posted on by

El Nino graphicWith last week’s NOAA announcement that El Niño is back, scientists, resource managers and coastal dwellers are preparing for a winter of increasing storm activity and potentially diminished ocean productivity in the Pacific – but a possibly milder-than-average Atlantic hurricane season and potentially beneficial rain in the arid American southwest.

El Niño, or the southern oscillation, is a climate phenomenon that occurs every two to five years and has significant effects on global weather, ocean conditions and marine fisheries. While its relative frequency makes El Niño among the most-studied and better-understood large-scale phenomena among climate scientists, it can be a mystery to the rest of us.

Oregon Sea Grant can help unravel that mystery through its short publication, El Niño. Profusely illustrated and written for lay audiences, the eight-page, color publication explains how ocean currents, wind and weather patterns come together in the Equatorial Pacific to create El Niño conditions that affect weather and fisheries from South America to Alaska.

El Niño can be downloaded free of charge from the Oregon Sea Grant Web site:

For more in-depth information, visit NOAA’s El Niño page.

Documentary Preview: Dan Cox

Posted on by

Dan Cox is the director for the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab at Oregon State University.  This bonus footage was recorded for the film Reaching Higher Ground: Oregon Sea Grant’s Tsunami Research and Community Engagement, which has been released to DVD and is available to view for free online.  In this short video clip (which does not appear in the film), Cox explains why the city of Seaside was chosen for developing a 1:50 scale model to flood repeatedly with scale-size tsunami waves.  You can learn more about the project here.

Transcript is available at above link

Documentary Preview: Michael Harte

Posted on by

In this preview to an upcoming documentary featuring Climate Change in Oregon, Michael Harte (Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, or COAS) explains that the effects of global climate change on our day-to-day lives are not necessarily the effects talked about in the larger discussion of climate change.

The documentary, scheduled for release this summer, will feature interviews with researchers that are already identifying effects on Oregon’s coast linked to climate change.  Part of the film will include recent research findings by Jack Barth (COAS) who discusses how local salmon are affected by changes in ocean conditions.  Sea Grant Extension agent, Robert Emmanuel, will describe recent increases in flooding in Tillamook, and Nathan Mantua, from the University of Washington, will talk about the effects of increasing winter storm activity.

Transcript is available at the above link

Oregon Sea Grant fellow studies effects of jellyfish off Oregon coast

Posted on by

lanayafitzgerald2The numbers of jellyfish in the Pacific Ocean have been increasing dramatically over the past few years, and scientists are concerned. Why? Because jellyfish eat certain fish larvae—which not only reduces the numbers of those fish but puts jellyfish in direct competition with other predators. Further, jellyfish can thrive in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters, giving them an added advantage for survival.

Oregon State University (OSU) student Lanaya Fitzgerald, a fellow in Oregon Sea Grant’s Undergraduate Marine Research Fellowship Program, has been conducting research to determine the effects of one particular species of jellyfish—the sea nettle—on fish larvae off the Oregon coast. Her research indicates that sea nettles do, indeed, have a voracious appetite for several commercially important fish species, including Pacific cod, Pacific tomcod, and walleye pollock.

Fitzgerald’s work with jellyfish began in 2008, when she participated in a National Science Foundation-sponsored program called “Research Experience for Undergraduates” at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), with mentors Ric Brodeur and Tom Hurst of NOAA. Co-mentor Bill Hanshumaker of HMSC helped supervise her Sea Grant fellowship. In early May of this year, Fitzgerald presented a poster highlighting some of the results of her research at OSU’s “Celebrating Undergraduate Excellence” symposium (see photo). On Saturday, June 27, her work will come full circle with a presentation (including some live jellyfish and fish larvae) at HMSC’s annual Seafest, in Newport, Oregon.

For more information, contact Ms. Fitzgerald at fitzgela@onid.orst.edu.