A grey whale breaches in a Mexican lagoon (photo courtesy of NOAA)

NEWPORT – The Visitor Center at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center will be a busy place the week after Christmas, with special exhibits and daily programming celebrating the annual southward migration of grey whales off Oregon’s coast.

The California grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is one of the world’s largest mammals, spending its life off the western coast of the US, Canada and Mexico. In the summer, they feed in Alaska’s Bering Sea; in the winter, they move to breeding grounds off Baja California to bear their young. Oregon State Parks celebrates their migratory seasons with winter and spring Whale Watch Weeks, placing trained volunteers at coastal parks and viewpoints to help visitors spot these huge animals as they move near shore.

The Visitor Center, operated by Oregon Sea Grant, will be open daily Dec. 26-31, from 10 am to 4 p.m. with a daily presentation on marine mammals at 1:30 p.m., as well as family activities, films and exhibits about marine mammal research. State Parks plans to post daily statistics about the number of whales spotted off the Oregon coast.

Learn more:

• Download a Whale Watch Week flyer from the HMSC Visitor Center.
• Visit the Oregon State Parks Whale Spoken Here website for a complete list of volunteer-staffed whale-watching sites on the Oregon coast.
• Check out our free, downloadable fact sheets: Gray Whales (available in English and Spanish) and Watching Whales.
• Visit the OSU Marine Mammal Institute website to learn about OSU’s latest whale research.

Meet Montgomery, the new resident giant Pacific octopus at the Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitor Center in Newport.

He was introduced to visitors last week and is proving to be a gregarious, active animal – especially at feeding times (Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 1 pm.

Next week is the perfect time to stop by the Visitor Center, get in out of the rain and say hello to our new octopus. Dec. 26-31 is  Winter Whale Watch Week, and we’ll be open from 10 am to 4 pm daily with special activities, exhibits and films!

Harbor seals (Photo by Dr. Brandon Southall, NMFS/OPR, courtesy NOAA Photo Library, https://www.flickr.com/photos/noaaphotolib/)

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A study by microbiologists at Oregon State University has concluded that an unsuspected bacterial infection, rather than a viral disease, was associated with the stranding and death of seven harbor seals on the California coast in 2009.

The research, made with a powerful investigative method called “meta-transcriptomics,” found a high incidence of infection in the seals with the bacterial pathogen Burkholderia, and provides the first report in the Americas of this bacteria in a wild harbor seal.

The bacteria probably did not directly cause the death of the seals, researchers say, but this provides further evidence of the increase in emerging marine pathogens, and the need for improved monitoring and study of zoonotic diseases that could affect both human and wildlife populations.

In light of these findings, OSU researchers also remind the public that they should not touch stranded or dead marine mammals.

The research was recently published in PLOS ONE, in work supported by Oregon Sea Grant and the National Science Foundation.

“We now have improved tools to better identify new diseases as they emerge from natural reservoirs, and can record and track these events,” said Rebecca Vega-Thurber, an assistant professor of microbiology in the OSU College of Science. “It’s becoming clear there are more pathogens than we knew of in the past, and that some of them can move into human populations.

“This is why it’s increasingly important that we accurately pinpoint the cause of these diseases, and understand the full range of causes that may factor into these deaths.”

Learn more:

• Read the full news release from OSU News and Research Communication
• Check out Dr. Vega-Thurber’s lab and blog

(Click on image for larger version)

Keats Conley, a PhD student at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, and 2014-15 Oregon Sea Grant Malouf Scholar, studies the feeding preferences of pelagic tunicates, animals that serve as a key link between minute, lower food-chain organisms, such as bacteria, and commercially important fishes.

It turns out that tunicates, whether stationary and anchored to rocks or mobile (such as the jellyfish-like salps), all use an ornate mucus mesh to feed on much-smaller creatures, including bacteria.

Check out the video Keats made to describe what she’s learned:

Learn more:

• Oregon Sea Grant Scholars – our fellowship and scholarship programs for graduate and undergraduate students studying marine science and policy
• Keats Conley’s Sea Grant Scholars profile

A new analysis of juvenile Chinook salmon in the Pacific Ocean documents a dramatic difference in their foraging habits and overall health between years of warm water and those when the water is colder.

The study found that when the water is warmer than average – by only two degrees Celsius – young salmon consume 30 percent more food than during cold-water regimes. Yet they are smaller and skinnier during those warm-water years, likely because they have to work harder to secure food and the prey they consume has less caloric energy.

Results of the research, conducted by researchers from Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are being published this week in the journal PLOS One.

“When young salmon come out to sea and the water is warm, they need more food to keep their metabolic rate up, yet there is less available food and they have to work harder,” said Elizabeth Daly, an Oregon State senior faculty research assistant with the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, a joint program of OSU and NOAA.

Learn more:

• Read the full release from OSU News and Research Communications
• Read about current and recent Oregon Sea Grant salmon research