Category Archives: people

Bacterial pollution affects Oregon beaches

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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.

Documentary Preview: Dan Cox

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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

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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

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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.

Exploring Beach Recovery

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In the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab at Oregon State University, Associate Professor Tuba Ozkan-Haller studies how beaches recover after winter storms.  The hope is that this information will go into predictive models that can help developers make smart decisions about how to protect properties or infrastructure along coastlines.  “People who have lived near the coast know that in the summertime the dry beach actually increases,” says Ozkan-Haller.  “There’s more sand that is just sitting on the dry beach area in the summertime. And that sand actually goes away in the wintertime because of the storms and forms a bar, sort of a submerged island offshore. It’s the way that the beach protects itself…. as the summer then approaches again during springtime, waves move that bar, that mound, back onto the beach. And, we found out that we’re actually very bad at predicting how that happens.”

She is joined by civil engineering professor Merrick Haller, who describes how the instrumentation is used to interpret the data.  After the data is analyzed, they hope to build numerical models that will help predict what will happen to the beaches after severe storms, and whether there will be increased need for protective structures or beach nourishment.

View Transcript

Oregon Sea Grant’s “Oregon Coast Quests” featured in magazine

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“Some call it a treasure hunt, but Quest coordinator Cait Goodwin, a marine educator with Oregon Sea Grant at ocmagcovermayjune09Newport’s Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), is quick to point out that the Quest Box at the end is not a treasure chest.”

So writes Julie Howard, Oregon Sea Grant program assistant, in the May/June 2009 edition of Oregon Coast magazine. Her article, “Oregon Coast Quests,” explains what Quests are and where to find them, and describes the experience of going on an actual Quest.

For more information about Oregon Coast Quests, call 541-867-0100 or visit the program’s Web site.

On the Trail of America’s First People

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Loren Davis, the executive director of the Keystone Archaeological Research Fund, is the subject of a profile in the current issue of the OSU research magazine, Terra. The former Sea Grant graduate student’s excavation of a site at Oregon’s Cape Blanco in 2002 is captured in a short video produced by Joe Cone. The video was part of a series of lively short subjects on the theme, “The Fun of Science.”

HMSC featured on Travel Oregon show

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This week’s episode of “Grant’s Getaways,” a Travel Oregon video blog by Oregon broadcast journalist Grant McOmie, features OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Visitor Center in Newport, where Sea Grant Extension educator Bill Hanshumaker talks about how the center connects fun with learning:

View the video at Travel Oregon’s Vimeo site).

New Oregon Sea Grant publication explores offshore aquaculture

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Offshore Aquaculture book cover

Offshore aquaculture — the cultivation of fish and shellfish in the open ocean — has been practiced successfully for years in coastal waters around the world. However, offshore aquaculture is sparse in the United States and nonexistent in the Pacific Northwest, and the resulting seafood trade deficit is costing us billions of dollars per year.

So says a new publication from Oregon Sea Grant, Offshore Aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest, edited by Oregon State University fisheries professor Chris Langdon.

“The United States is far from sufficient in meeting its demands for seafood,” Langdon says. “Forty-five percent of our wild fish stocks are overfished, and we import about 80 percent of our seafood from other countries, at an annual cost of $13 billion. Clearly there is a need to develop additional sources of seafood.”

Offshore aquaculture may eventually prove to be one of those sources.

With support from NOAA and other federal and state agencies, Langdon says, offshore aquaculture projects have been established in a few regions of the United States. However, no such projects have been established in the Pacific Northwest.

Thus, last fall Langdon invited representatives of state and federal agencies, the media, research institutions, and coastal and fishing communities to Newport, Oregon, to evaluate the potential of offshore aquaculture in this region. Offshore Aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest presents the results of that forum, including recommendations for next steps in the discussion.

Copies of the 24-page publication may be downloaded at no charge from http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs.html#w08001, or purchased for $3.50 each plus shipping from Sea Grant Communications, 541-737-4849.

In addition, individual papers and presentations from Langdon’s offshore aquaculture forum are available as PDF documents and streaming video at http://oregonstate.edu/conferences/aquaculture2008.

Oregon Sea Grant’s Julie Howard publishes article about hypoxia

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“In 2006, Oregon and Washington experienced the worst hypoxic event on record as near-shore oxygen levels dropped in some places to zero…”

So writes Julie Howard, Oregon Sea Grant program assistant, in the March/April 2009 edition of Oregon Coast magazine. Her article, “An Ocean without Oxygen,” goes on to describe some of the possible causes of hypoxia, the devastating effects, and how researchers and fishermen are collaborating to address the issue.

For more information about the hypoxia phenomenon, visit the Web site of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO).