Sea Grant shares in public education grant

Oregon Sea Grant’s Free-Choice Learning program will join with the Oregon Coast Aquarium, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Maryland Science Center and others in a three-year effort to expand professional development opportunities for museum, aquariums, zoo and park educators in an effort to improve informal science education.

The project, known as the Communicating Ocean Sciences Informal Education Network, is funded through a National Science Foundation initiative aimed at fostering and improving the kind of informal science education that takes place at aquariums, museums and other learning centers.

Leading the team for OSU is Shawn Rowe, Sea Grant marine education and learning specialist and an assistant professor with the OSU Department of Science and Math Education. Rowe heads Sea Grant’s Free-Choice Learning program, which studies the kind of learning people do outside the classroom.

Rowe’s program uses the Visitor Center at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport as a living lab for studying various approaches to informal science education, how to engage visitors and what kind of information people take away from their aquarium visits.

The Sea Grant program will receive more than $278,000 from the NSF over the next three years to develop training, workshops and curricula for informal science educators, and to continue work the program has already begun to foster a network of informal science educators and scientists who want to communicate their work to the public.

Read more about Sea Grant’s Free-Choice Learning program here.

Coastal forums focus on wave energy

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

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.

NOAA to move research ships to Newport

RV Bell M. Shimada

RV Bell M. Shimada

NEWPORT – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this morning that Newport will be the home of the agency’s Marine Operations Center-Pacific beginning in 2011.

The federal agency chose Newport over bids from Seattle – where four of NOAA’s 10 Pacific research vessels are now based – as well as Bellingham and Port Angeles, WA. The deal awaits signing of a 20-year lease with the Port of Newport.

“This is huge,” Ginny Goblirsch, Port of Newport commissioner and Sea Grant Extension agent emeritus, told the Oregonian. “It means everything. It’s like $400 million over the next 20 years to the community and state. ”

The move is expected bring to Newport approximately 175 NOAA employees, including more than 110 officers and crew assigned to the NOAA ships McArthur II, Miller Freeman, Rainier and Bell M. Shimada, a new fisheries survey vessel expected to join the research fleet in 2010.

The agency went through an extensive public process before deciding where to locate the facility. According to an agency press release, considerations in site selection included NOAA’s infrastructure needs, proximity to maritime industry resources and NOAA labs, quality of life for employees, the ability to meet the desired occupancy date of July 2011, when the agency’s Seattle lease expires.

The federal agency’s vessels are used to conduct research and gather data about the world’s oceans and atmosphere. Newport and OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center are already home to NOAA’s VENTS program, which conducts research on the impacts and consequences of submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal venting on the global ocean.

(NOAA is the parent agency of Sea Grant programs in Oregon, Washington and other coastal and Great Lakes states.)

Read more

Celebrate fisheries at HMSC

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.