Whale, Whale, Whale…What do we have here?

Posted on July 19, 2015 by sea_abb

When looking back on my childhood, I could easily tell you that my love for whales began right here in Newport at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Like any native Oregonian kid in the 90’s, I fan girled hardcore for Keiko the whale (Aka: Freewilly) and would harass my parents constantly to go visit him in the aquarium. I knew then that I wanted my future career to be focused around marine animals, especially whales…

Monday began with another SMURFing trip that occurs every two weeks. As I talked about before, it was an amazing experience and I was excited to do it again. This time, I did not suit up and get in the water, but instead helped to collect data and extract the juvenile fish from the SMURF. Although, this time we didn’t only see juvenile fish, we saw a whale! It was a crazy sight and came so close to Sara and Dani who were retrieving the SMURF. I wasn’t even in the water and I thought that it was so incredible! This experience just solidified why I love marine science (and whales) so much.

The rest of the week consisted of more sea star monitoring. This time, Sara and I worked with a team from UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday and Thursday. Again this was awesome, and the getting my hands dirty was great, yet unfortunately the 4 am wake up each day was a struggle. Waking up and being at work when it is still dark out is the weirdest experience although I still really enjoyed it. The fact that three of my work days this week consisted of field work was a win and also on Friday we were able to go to the aquarium for our mid Summer check in with Sea Grant! I was able to put my rockfish speices I.D to the test while wandering the aquarium and check out some sea lions and otters. They also had great fudge in the gift shop. They get an A plus in my book. Friday was also very humbling in the fact that it helped me to realize that I need to brush up on my public speaking. A workshop was held on scientific communication and speaking in front of everyone was actually quite terrifying to me. It is definitely something I must overcome and I’m glad we had the workshop.

Finally, I would like to say that I am in awe that we are in week six now. I have had a great experience so far and I am looking forward to the last half of the summer and continue hanging out with my fellow interns!

Week Four: Celebrations and Sea Surface Temperature!

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Micaela Edelson

I am no longer writing for this blog as a teenager! My twentieth birthday was Saturday and my family and best-friend came down to Newport for the weekend! We walked around Hatfield, we walked along the Bay front, visited the beach, did a little hiking, and celebrated my birthday at the Noodle café. The weekend was like home at the beach!

This week at work I was researching predicted sea-surface temperatures in 2100 for each ecoregion. I also had to find values for each of International Panel on Climate Change’s Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). These are emission scenarios that could occur over the course of the century depending on emission restrictions and other climate change initiatives that we pursue. The four scenarios are 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5—named after the range of possible radiative forcings in 2100. As I am finding four projections for each of the twelve ecoregions, I have to find 48 values. However, the literature does not have all of those numbers and I am waiting until this week to talk to one of mentors, Henry, to get his opinion on what the course of action should be as he was out of town most of this past week.

Nonetheless, what I have found has been worrisome. All of the values I have found project at least a 1˚C increase by the end of the century with some scenarios predicting up to a 5˚C increase. In order to determine organisms’ relative vulnerability to an increase in sea surface temperature, Henry is developing a table of thermal cutpoints for each ecoregion based on current mean sea surface temperature data and the projected sea surface temperature values. None, low, moderate, and high risk of temperature increase for the species will be determined through the species’ thermal tolerance which is indicative of their current biogeographical distribution. Henry developed a complicated series of rules that I don’t completely understand and don’t think I can properly explain quite yet.

In addition to researching sea surface temperature, the other intern working in my office, Christina (my other mentor), and I were all supposed to get field work training on a boat last Friday; however, the intern was sick and we postponed the trip until next week. Since I was waiting for Henry to return, I didn’t have much research to do. Instead, I helped Christina write an abstract for a climate conference that she will attend in November. She will be presenting a poster on CBRAT and how it is incorporating climate change impacts and specific values to assess species’ vulnerability. She has presented at this conference before, but this will be the first time she is able to report on the climate side of CBRAT which will surely please the climatologists at the conference—many of whom have published studies that I have obtained values from.

Wading into the data…

Posted on July 9, 2015 by sea_ron

The end of week three signaled the shift into high gear or perhaps “low gear” because time doesn’t pass so quickly. The databases have been selected, the data has been pulled from papers, additional numbers have been received from researchers in several countries, and now I’m faced with making sense of it all. I know, it sounds pretty boring, and at times it can be. Looking at 4000 rows of data, debating how to weigh a lack or surplus of information from one site in order to compare it to another, figuring out how to make it all useful…it’s particularly challenging. But before we can begin teasing out exciting new information, the data mining stage is crucial. Outside the mind-numbing, we had a number of other activities going on this week: we had a productive and clarifying conference call with the lead developer of one of the models we will be working with, the Natural Capital Project’s inVEST Blue Carbon model. In addition, the grad/postdoc students at the EPA hosted an extremely helpful resume/CV workshop…it’s been 4 years since I changed the format of my CV and it definitely needed a refresh.

This past weekend was also the Fourth of July and I can’t think of any better way to celebrate America than going out bright and early to explore Caper Perpetua, part of a federally protected National Forest. It’s a beautiful manifestation of one of the world’s greatest land conservation schemes–the US National Forest System, which is truly something all Americans should be proud of. While there, I finally satisfied one of my goals coming out to Oregon: tide-pooling on the Pacific coast.

The SRGP Receives $205 Million for 2015-17!

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Geoff Ostrove

The Oregon Legislature recently approved $205 million to be used for the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program (SRGP). For 2015-16, $50 million will be spent on public schools. For 2015-2016, $125 million will be spent on public schools and another $30 million will be spent on emergency service buildings. The Legislature passed a separate bill to spend $125 million on a program to help build public schools in areas that are less seismically vulnerable. That means that Oregon will be spending at least $300 million in its effort to improve the seismic safety of public schools.

Check out this article: http://ijpr.org/post/2015-marks-banner-year-earthquake-preparedness-oregon

Do you have a moment?

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Laura Ferguson

Would you help us improve our customer service by completing a short survey?

How many times have you been asked this question? How many times have you been the one asking it? The number of times I have asked someone to complete a survey has increased considerably in the last three months.

In May I asked all participants in the science-stakeholder engagement portion of the Willamette Water 2100 (WW2100) research at OSU to complete an online questionnaire about their participation in, expectations of, experiences with, and outcomes from WW2100. After inviting all 238 members of the WW2100 listserv to participate in my survey, reminding them, and then reminding them again, 137 WW2100 participants took the time (approximately 30 minutes) to thoughtfully respond to my questions. 137 respondents out of 238 invited is a respectable response rate of 48%. The questionnaire was about 30 questions long and looked something like this:

In my last post I shared about conducting interviews of select participants in WW2100. Using more than one method to gather data is called a ‘mixed methods approach’ and can deliver more robust results because they were found by more than one way. That is what I intend to do with my qualitative interview data and now my quantitative survey data.

Qualitative data analysis can be done in several ways but I have chosen to use a ‘fancy highlighting program’ called MaxQDA (description credit to Sarah Calhoun, MRM, OSU). This program allows a researcher to identify relevant text and organize it according to codes, or repeating ideas, which can then be displayed together on request. I have just completed my second pass of coding (identifying repeating ideas and organizing them into themes) so that now when I open MaxQDA on my computer, it looks something like this:

Concepts that emerged in the qualitative data can be assessed quantitatively using the survey data. I would like to share some (very) preliminary results from my analyses with you. One challenge that consistently emerged in the interviews was that participants held different expectations for the roles that stakeholders and research team members would play throughout the process. However, although the survey results indicate that stakeholders and research team members were expected to fulfill different roles, stakeholders and research team members did not differ in their expectations for each other. That is, albeit preliminarily, there was not a quantitative difference in expectations for the role of stakeholders and research team members. I’ll have to explore this challenge more.

Another aspect of stakeholder engagement that my survey can really illuminate involves the outcomes of having participated in such a process. My survey measured participant concepts of model utility (the scientific results), process utility (was it worth the time?), feeling heard, and understanding. I then correlated these concepts with a participant’s participation in the project. All four concepts were significantly positively correlated with participation. This means that individuals who reported greater participation also reported greater perception of model utility, process utility, feeling heard, and understanding. How neat is that?!

There is still a lot of work to be done but the data are in and now all that is left is to make sense of them. I split my time between the words of my interviewees and the numbers from my survey. Together they will tell a complete story of the WW2100 science-stakeholder engagement process which can then be read as an example for future engagement projects. Stay tuned for the final results and presentation!

Pit Traps for the Mudflats

Posted on July 5, 2015 by sea_aus

This week was great for field experience. I spent a majority of the time working in the mudflats deploying pit traps (24 in total). Multiple field days, waking up at the early hours, and trekking through the mud has been both tiring and rewarding. I have learned about capture methods for crabs and also have been looking into new methods for panoramic/stereoscopic filming (will have more information next blog). Also it has been long awaited, but in the middle of this coming week I will have some video footage of the crabs from the experimental pit traps from last week. Found some very interesting footage of a crab which, from what we believe, is trying to crack open his shell to molt. Spending the 4th of July in Oregon was wonderful as well. The fireworks show may not have been an Indiana show, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Example of pit trap for size selection of Dungeness crabs

Endless Oppor”TUNA’ties

Posted on July 5, 2015 by sea_abb

Week three is officially over and I can very confidently say that this has been my favorite week of working for the Marine Reserves Program, hands down. The week consisted of three days of field work and stability and deadlines for some of the goals that I want to achieve while here in Newport.

As I talked about the previous week in my blog post, I was able to go out SMURFing on Monday morning. This turned out to be a lot of fun even though we had an early wake up. During this excursion, my job was to replace each of these larval recruitment nets (SMURFS as they call them), and bring the ones that were already deployed back in to sample. When the nets come up on the boat, they water is dumped on them and they are shaken to attempt to retrieve juvenile fish from them. From there the fish are measured and counted. It is a way of monitoring the recruitment of fish in the marine reserves and the comparison areas. There were a total of eight SMURFS to retrieve and replace, four in the comparison area (Cape Foulweather) and one in the Otter Rock Marine Reserve. We were done by ten in the morning and the process is very straight forward so it didn’t take long.

The week continued to get better and on Tuesday, Sarah (the other Marine Reserves intern , Christian (our supervisor) and I were able to go to the aquarium and snorkel in the tanks. I cannot get over how amazing this was and the fact that as a kid this was my lifelong dream whenever I went to the aquarium….besides meeting Keiko. For the most part, our reasoning for going was to help us identify the rockfish species that live off the coast so when we score videos, we will be more confident in the fish we are identifying. I also think they just wanted us to have some fun. :)

But wait, there’s more. Thursday we went sea star sampling at Otter Rock Marine Reserve! During this time, we looked for sea stars in the intertidal area of the reserve and categorized them as either healthy or diseased with sea star wasting disease. The amount of sea stars in the area has decreased dramatically due to this, yet during the time monitoring, we found one that could be categorized with the disease. In the long run, I realize that office work will be a big part of the job as well, but for now, I am really enjoying being able to go out in the field so much!

One of the best things that I enjoy about this job is the fact that on Wednesdays they have soccer! For an hour during lunch for the past two weeks, I’ve gotten to play pick up outside on the lawn by the dorms. It’s been fun and definitely a good way to get out of the office for a bit, plus I LOVE playing soccer. The only downer is a lot of the World Cup woman’s soccer matches have been at four so I haven’t been able to watch them as much as I’d like. Although right now I am currently watching the final and the US is doing work. Hopefully when I write next week I will be able to say that I watched a US win!

A Sea Grant Update from C-MORE

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Keats Conley

Hello Sea Grant community! This is a blog update from the Center for Microbial Oceanographic Research and Education (C-MORE) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where I’ve been participating in a summer training program for the last five weeks. The course, “Microbial Oceanography: Genomes to Biomes,” is offered to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with interests in marine microbiology and biological oceanography. As an Oregon-based zooplankton ecologist, I felt like a bit of an odd duck in a microbial oceanography training program in the oligotrophic North Pacific subtropical gyre. But, since I study predator-prey interactions, and my study organisms (appendicularians) feed on microbes, I decided I would benefit from a more comprehensive perspective of the prey. The C-MORE summer program provided the idyllic introduction to microbes, including a weeklong research cruise aboard the R/V Kilo Moana, during which we measured processes such as bacterial production using tritium-labeled leucine incorporation, primary production using ¹⁴C, cell types and abundances using flow cytometry, and particulate carbon and nitrogen flux using sediment traps.

Preparing to deploy sediment traps aboard the R/V Kilo Moana at Station ALOHA in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.

I’m excited that my work with microbes will continue in Oregon through the support of a Julie and Rocky Dixon Graduate Innovation Award, a fellowship designed to support Oregon doctoral students who are interested in pursuing innovative, “nontraditional” career development experiences. I received the fellowship to extend my collaboration with Oregon Sea Grant to develop an educational exhibit on marine microbes. Through my research, I plan to produce a collection of microscopy images of the ocean’s more abundant microbes (e.g. Synechococcus, Prochlorococcus, Pelagibacter, Ostreococcus), which can then be an educational tool, promoting public understanding of the critical role of bacteria in marine food webs.

One of the microscopes I plan to use to produce such images is an Atomic Force Microscope. I just began training on our instrument at the University of Oregon.

The Atomic Force Microscope at the University of Oregon

The microscope is rather finicky, and I’m still working on the best technique for immobilizing cells, but if you squint hard enough at my first image, you can detect the spherical outline of a microalga cell.

My first Atomic Force Microscopy image of microalgae cells (less squinting required in future iterations)

For the love of science…

Posted on July 1, 2015 by sea_ron

(marine) Science isn’t always about going out and exploring new environments, seeking out new samples and data or boldly going where no marine scientist has gone before. A large part of science is what we call “meta-analyses.” That essentially means taking data others have already collected (usually from many other studies, and conducting analyses (usually statistical) to draw new conclusions. It’s a valuable part of modern science because it cheaply and effectively synthesizes a large amount of information (sometimes hundreds of papers) on a given topic and allows other researchers to more quickly push in new directions. My research this summer, while not quite a meta-analysis, involves reading a large amount of research on what is called “Blue carbon,” or the carbon stored by marine ecosystems (i.e. mangroves, marshes, and seagrass) and compiling data from the papers I read. My first week of mild confusion gave way to a second week with a more direct goal. We’ve finally (most likely) decided to focus my case study on seagrass blue carbon and the transferability of those particular ecosystem service estimates. Right now we are “playing” with a massive 3660 row spreadsheet and we are going to see where that takes us…more on that next week.

In other news, I visited my first West Coast capital this weekend with a few of the other scholars. Portland has a lot to offer no matter what your interests: it’s a foodie paradise (from Blue Star Donuts to the plethora of food trucks), its a hipster homeland (Toms’ store, Saturday market, Buffalo Exchange), and perfect for the all-around character (Saturday market, Powell’s books, the naked bike ride). We also were sure to visit the Tigard farmer’s market before returning to Newport.

As for the Hatfield Community–I’ve definitely settled in comfortably, besides the imminent threat of tsunami-induced annihilation. Actually, on that note, this past Friday the Hatfielders participated in a “Run for the Hills” Tsunami drill. I’m proud to say my mentor (Melissa) and I were the first ones at the top of the hill in just 10:30. That bodes well if the mega-earthquake, caused by the Cascadian Subduction Zone, were to occur…but I’m hoping it waits at least 8 more weeks. On a more positive note, each week has a lot of engaging activities including Wednesday donuts, Thursday lectures, pick-up games of ultimate frisbee after work, not-so-infrequent trips to the crab shack down the road, and soon-to-begin workshops focusing on CVs, cover letters, etc.

The summer is shifting into gear and I’m looking forward to Fourth of July weekend in Newport…although a Rodeo in the valley could also be a possibility…

Week Two: Adieu

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Micaela Edelson

My second week as an Oregon Sea Grant Scholar is coming to an end. This week has been incredibly exciting and justifiably greater than the last. I finalized values for expected sea-level rise by ecoregion and defended my numbers and sources in our weekly team meetings. I also moved on to researching more about ocean acidification. We are researching how climate change is impacting marine organisms, so we are using aragonite saturation as a measure of ocean acidification rather than pH. As the acidity in the ocean increases, carbonate decreases and so does aragonite saturation. Thus, the lower the aragonite saturation state, the more difficult it is for calcifying organisms to survive. My mentor, Henry Lee, has numbers for expected aragonite saturation by 2100 for each ecoregion provided by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), but these values were calculated for the middle of the ocean rather than off the coast—where the calcifying organisms are located. My task is to find expected aragonite saturation values to see if the IUCN numbers are valid.

Next week the EPA Pacific Coastal Ecological Branch is expecting EPA administrators from Washington to visit and another intern will be working in my office, so I am excited to go to work! Also, this past week I got an official EPA sign for my office door!

As far as social life is concerned, the summer interns are still having a blast. Several of the Sea Grant scholars and an REU intern went to Portland for the weekend and explored the city! We went to the Saturday Market, walked around Pioneer’s Place, went to Powell’s bookstore, shopped at Buffalo Exchange, and went to the Tigard farmer’s market!

Overall, I really feel like I’m growing as a person throughout this experience. My previous summers were lazy and very relaxed; but as I have a 9-5 workday during the week, I am making more of an effort to ensure that my weekend is full of fun in order to counteract the seriousness my work week. It has been tiring between working eight hours a day and finding time to socialize and have fun, but I think it has helped me appreciate time more. I’m excited to work next week, and I am excited to celebrate the 4^th of July at Newport!

Sea Grant Scholars

Learning through experience, for the future of our oceans

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