Ongoing study finds more albacore with traces of Fukushima radiation

Jason Phillips bleeds an albacoreAlbacore tuna caught off the Oregon shore after the Fukushima Daiichi power station in Japan was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake had slightly elevated levels of radioactivity but the increase has been minute, according to a newly published study.

In fact, you would have to consume more than 700,000 pounds of the fish with the highest radioactive level – just to match the amount of radiation the average person is annually exposed to in everyday life through cosmic rays, the air, the ground, X-rays and other sources, the authors say.

Results of the study are being published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

“You can’t say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk,” said Delvan Neville, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. “But these trace levels are too small to be a realistic concern.

“A year of eating albacore with these cesium traces is about the same dose of radiation as you get from spending 23 seconds in a stuffy basement from radon gas, or sleeping next to your spouse for 40 nights from the natural potassium-40 in their body,” he added. “It’s just not much at all.”

 

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Oregon Sea Grant Communications wins three Communicator Awards

Oregon Sea Grant is pleased and proud to announce that its Communications team has won three 2014 Communicator Awards:trophy_gold

1. Award of Excellence for Dump Station PSA, in the Online Video-Public Service Category

2. Award of Distinction for Climate Field Notes: Insights from a NOAA Sea Grant Network Project, in the Publication-Special Edition category

3. Award of Distinction for Oregon Sea Grant Strategic Plan 2014-2107, in the Publication-Overall Design category

According to the Communicator Awards’ website:

The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive, and audio. This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.

The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. Please visit aiva.org for a full member list and more information.

For more information about the Communicator Awards, please visit www.communicatorawards.com.

Congratulations to everyone involved in producing these fine publications and videos!

 

Researcher: Changes in processing, handling could cut commercial fishing injuries

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Handling frozen fish caused nearly half of all injuries aboard commercial freezer-trawlers and about a quarter of the injuries on freezer-longliner vessels operating off the coast of Alaska, new research from Oregon State University shows.

Many of those injuries and others aboard the two types of vessels could be prevented with the right interventions, and the research methods used in the study could help identify and reduce injuries and fatalities in other types of commercial fishing, said researcher Devin Lucas. His findings were published in the “American Journal of Industrial Medicine.”

“We’ve drilled down to such a detailed level in the injury data that we can actually address specific hazards and develop prevention strategies,” said Lucas, who recently received his Ph.D. in public health from OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences and works for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the Alaska Pacific office.

Lucas’ study is the first scientific assessment of the risk of fishing on freezer-trawlers and freezer-longliners. In both types of vessels, the processing of fish is handled on-board. The vessels had reputations for being among the most dangerous in commercial fishing in part because of a few incidents that resulted in multiple fatalities.

However, an analysis of 12 years of injury data showed that fishing on the freezer vessels was less risky than many other types of commercial fishing, which is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, Lucas said. The rate of injury on freezer-trawlers was about the same as the national average for commercial fishing, while the rate aboard freezer-longliners was about half of the national average.

“The reality is that many fisheries elsewhere in the U.S., including Oregon Dungeness crabbing, are much more dangerous,” Lucas said.

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HMSC hosts Marine Science Day April 12

Marine Science Day 2013 - photo by Jeffrey BasingerNEWPORT – OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center throws open its doors on Saturday, April 12 for Marine Science Day, a behind-the-scenes peek at the center’s marine research labs, education programs and family activities.

The free, public event runs from 10 am to 4 pm, and includes meet-the-scientist tours of many of the Oregon State University, state and federal labs based at the Newport campus. The public will get a chance to explore cutting-edge ocean science via interactive displays presented by researchers, along with family-friendly fun activities led by staff from Oregon Sea Grant, the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The day includes interactive exhibits all day long about larval fish ecology, the bioacoustics of whales, volcanoes and deep ocean vents and oceanographic tools.

Activities for children include the Bird Beak Buffet from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a Fossil Dig with Oregon Sea Grant, the OSU-based program which operates the HMSC’s public Visitor Center.

The event also marks the 25th Anniversary of OSU’s Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station, and visitors are invited to celebrate with special exhibits and research highlights from COMES’ quarter century as the nation’s first university experiment station dedicated to the marine sciences.

The neighboring Oregon Coast Aquarium will present a program on seals and sea lions in the Visitor Center’s Hennings Auditorium at 11 am and 2 pm, and at 1:30, visitors can watch, ask questions and learn as the center’s aquarists feed the resident giant Pacific octopus.

For a complete schedule, visit http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/marinescienceday/schedule

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Sea Grant “Stone Soup” lesson plan featured in national science ed newsletter

Stone Soup strip

click to enlarge

A new Sea Grant lesson plan that employs lessons from a popular comic strip to teach middle-school and elementary students about the perils of releasing classroom pets into the wild is featured in the spring newsletter of FOSS, a nationally prominent program of research-based science learning for elementary and middle-school classrooms based at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley.

The newsletter has been mailed to subscribers, and will be featured at a National Science Teachers Association meeting later this week.

Developed by Oregon Sea Grant’s invasive species team and collaborators in Oregon, Washington and California, the Stone Soup Cartooning and Invasive Species lesson encourages youngsters to use art and language skills to learn about biology, ecology, invasive species, and the importance of learning from one’s actions. Students study and discuss the cartoon, and then write and illustrate their own comics about some aspect of invasive species.

The idea for the lesson plan was born from a series of comics drawn last year by Jan Eliot, the Oregon artist who writes and draws the popular, nationally syndicated Stone Soup strip. Eliot, who once wanted to study marine biology, wanted to call attention to the ecological damage that can happen when well-meaning teachers and students release classroom pets such as crayfish and turtles into the wild. She called on Oregon Sea Grant’s invasive species specialist, Sam Chan, to make sure she got the science right.

The result was an entire storyline, which ran in newspapers across the country last September, featuring ongoing Stone Soup character Alix – a budding child scientist who doesn’t always consider the consequences of her acts – and a pet crayfish named Pinchy.

With the blessing of Eliot (and her syndication service) Chan and his partners in the West Coast Sea Grant Regional Aquatic Invasive Species Alliance developed the new lesson plan and associated learning activities to build on the cartoons’ success, and provide teachers with tools to incorporate the subject into their science teaching. The plan is part of a nationwide project to educate teachers – and suppliers of classroom animals – about the ecosystem damage released non-native pets and cause, and other humane alternatives to freeing them in the wild.

Besides conducting ongoing research to improving the learning and teaching of science, FOSS is one of two major US suppliers of K-8 science kits that bases its STEM curricula on learning with live specimens.

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