Breaking Waves

NEWPORT – Dan Bottom, fisheries biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, steps up to the bar to talk about salmon at the next Science on Tap event on March 13 at Brewer’s on the Bay.

“Celebrating Diversity: Sustaining Pacific Salmon in a Changing World” is Bottom’s theme for the evening, which takes place in the downstairs Board room at Rogue Ale’s South Beach waterfront location. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the talk begins at 6; the event is free and open to the public. Appetizers will be served, and additional food and drinks available for purchase from the menu.

Bottom, editor and contributing author for Oregon Sea Grant’s 2011 book Pathways to Resilience: Sustaining Pacific Salmon in a Changing World, will discuss the importance of salmon diversity and the attributes of resilience. His talk will draw from the book’s 11 peer-reviewed articles, including case studies of salmon and salmon fisheries, and will explore management actions that draw on salmon life history and genetic diversity to maintain salmon populations into the future.

Bottom notes, “Salmon exhibit a wide variety of life history traits. These include salmon runs and populations that exhibit differences in migration timing, duration of estuary rearing and size when the salmon enter the ocean.” Healthy, diverse watersheds, says Bottom, provide habitat connections that not only sustain diverse salmon life histories but also provide diverse social and economic opportunities for people.

The 392-page, full-color book, with a prologue by Governor John Kitzhaber, will be available at the event for purchase and author signing. It can also be purchased online from Oregon Sea Grant.

Science on Tap is a regular program of OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, co-sponsored by Oregon Sea Grant, NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, MidCoast Watersheds Council, Native Fish Society, and The Wetlands Conservancy. For more information about the event, call 541-867-0234.

A new university-level discussion guide, developed by the National Sea Grant Law Center, is now available for the  documentary film, Ocean Frontiers: The Dawn of a New Era in Ocean Stewardship.

The film features a profile of Port Orford, Oregon, where commercial fishermen and other community members are teaming with scientists to understand and protect the region’s marine fisheries.

The Sea Grant Law Center describes Ocean Frontiers as “an ideal communication tool to help audiences understand key principles of ecosystem-based management and coastal and marine spatial planning. These complex topics come to life and are easy to grasp through the stories and people featured in Ocean Frontiers.”

This discussion guide was produced for Green Fire Productions by the National Sea Grant Law Center with the assistance of the Ocean and Coastal Law Committee of Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Society to help professors incorpo­rate Ocean Frontiers into the classroom. The guide is available for download here: http://bit.ly/OFdiscussionguide

Learn more:

• Visit oceanfrontiers.org to learn more about the film.
• Interested in using the film in the classroom, or hosting a public screening? Fill out the online form.

A group of students from Purdue University, North Carolina State University, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences came together on the Oregon coast last month to learn about sustainable use of natural resources in the Pacific Northwest, as part of an annual summer program sponsored by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Purdue’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.

The group spent time with Oregon Sea Grant Extension specialists on the coast, learning about the commercial fishing and oyster industries, visiting the Hatfield Marine Science Center, and even getting a chance to see the 66-foot-long Japanese dock that had been ripped away by the March, 2011 tsunami and deposited on Oregon’s Agate Beach.

Read more about their trip and the program on Lakeside Views, the blog of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant

(Photo courtesy of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant)

At the intersection of science and art, you’ll find Jerri Bartholomew, a microbiologist and salmon researcher who also has a passion for working with glass.

“I see my artwork as being parallel to my scientific experimentation,” she says. “Science is often a very long process–it may take months, years, or even decades to find an answer to something, whereas art… you can get into the studio and experiment and come out with a product within hours, days, or weeks.”

But whatever the time scale, Bartholomew’s passion for scientific processes is evident as she shares her successes in solving some of the mysteries behind a growing threat to Pacific salmon, a parasite called Ceratomyxa shasta. Like many other parasites, C. shasta has a complex life cycle, requiring both vertebrate and invertebrate hosts to successfully reproduce.

In this installment of Netcasts, we visit the John L. Fryer Salmon Disease Laboratory, where Bartholomew and her team are using genetic tools to piece together a puzzle, searching for the right ways to target parasites while protecting salmon.  We’ll also get a glimpse at some of her artwork, including some more recent pieces in a set called “Pages From a Naturalist Notebook.”

YouTube Direct

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A task force that conducted one of the most comprehensive analyses of global “forage fish” populations is strongly recommending that world governments tighten catch limits on sardines, anchovies and other crucial prey species.

The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force calls for restricting harvest of such forage fish so that they can continue to serve as critical prey for larger species, including salmon, cod and tuna, as well as for dolphins, whales, penguins and seabirds.

The report concludes that the fish are “twice as valuable in the water as in a net.”

“Forage fish are essential components of marine ecosystems,” said Selina Heppell, an Oregon State University fisheries ecologist and one of the authors on the report.  “The status and importance of each species can be difficult to evaluate because many of them migrate long distances and they can fluctuate dramatically in abundance.

“There also are regional differences in how the fisheries are managed and the relative health of the population,” added Heppell, an associate professor in OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and past recipient of Oregon Sea Grant research support. “The West Coast sardine fishery, for example, is carefully monitored. They have a ‘harvest control rule’ that sets the harvest at about 10 percent of the overall stock, and when the population gets below a certain level, they stop fishing.

Read the complete news release from OSU News & Communications