Posted by: Pat Kight | January 22, 2013 Comments Off |
TACOMA, Wash. - Oregon and Washington Sea Grant are co-hosting the 2013 National Working Waterfronts & Waterways Symposium March 25-28 in Tacoma.
This is the third national symposium on issues faced by working waterfronts throughout the United States, where increased coastal population is generating increasing conflicts over access to and uses of waterfronts.
The symposium is expected to draw local, regional, tribal and national decision-makers; members of the commercial fishing, marine, and tourism industries, developers and property owners; business owners, community planners and waterfront advocates .
Session topics will include discussions about:
Economic and social impacts of and on working waterfronts
Successful local, regional, state and federal Strategies to address working waterfront issues
The future of working waterfronts: Changing uses and changing climate
Posted by: Pat Kight | August 27, 2012 Comments Off |
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
Posted by: Pat Kight | August 21, 2012 Comments Off |
One of the first public wave energy testing systems in the United States began operation this week off the Oregon coast near Newport, and will allow private industry or academic researchers to test new technology that may help advance this promising form of sustainable energy.
Ocean Sentinel is a $1.5 million device developed by the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, or NNMREC, at Oregon State University. The device was towed to the Center’s designated testing site 2 miles offshore from Yaquina Head on Sunday by OSU’s R/V Pacific Storm, and attached to a battery of mooring anchors that will keep it in place.
It’s a major step forward for the future of wave energy, and should do its first testing within days, when the “WetNZ” device developed by private industry joins it at the testing site.
The creation of this mobile wave energy test facility has been needed for years, experts say, and it will be used by many companies and academic researchers in the quest to develop wave energy technology, measure and understand the wave resource, and study the energy output and other important issues.
“The Ocean Sentinel will provide a standardized, accurate system to compare various wave energy technologies, including systems that may be better for one type of wave situation or another,” said Sean Moran, ocean test facilities manager with NNMREC.
“We have to find out more about which technologies work best, in what conditions, and what environmental impacts there may be,” Moran said. “We’re not assuming anything. We’re first trying to answer the question, ‘Is this a good idea or not?’ And if some technology doesn’t work as well, we want to find that out quickly, and cheaply, and the Ocean Sentinel will help us do that.”
Posted by: Pat Kight | June 1, 2012 Comments Off |
Marine renewable energy – from waves and from the wind – is the topic of the June edition of Science Pub Corvallis.
Held on the second Monday of the month, 6 to 8 p.m. in the Old World Deli, 341 2nd St. in Corvallis, Science Pub is sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the Downtown Corvallis Association and OSU’s Terra magazine. Admission is free; food and drink are available to purchase.
For this month’s edition, Belinda Batten of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center will discuss ongoing research into wave energy under way in Oregon and elsewhere. “We’ve got the technical side, the environmental side and the outreach to communities through Oregon Sea Grant. You don’t have that everywhere,” she says. Engineered systems, she adds, will need to survive extreme ocean conditions and minimize impact on the environment and traditional ocean uses.
NNMREC is a collaborative effort of Oregon State University and the University of Washington. Oregon Sea Grant is involved in the Center’s work through its ongoing public outreach and engagement efforts on the Oregon Coast.
This summer, a boxy yellow platform called the Ocean Sentinel will anchor in heavy swells off the Oregon coast and help open a new stage in the effort to turn wave energy into usable electricity.
Built at a cost of $1.5 million, the rugged craft will loosen a bottleneck that has dogged the startup wave-energy industry: Getting equipment out of the lab and tested in the brutal conditions of the open ocean.
Europe has a similar device, but the Oregon berth is the first mobile platform to be deployed in U.S. waters and made available for use by small firms that couldn’t afford to do testing in any other way.
“This testing capability is a first for wave energy,” said Annette von Jouanne, a professor of electrical engineering at Oregon State University (OSU) who came up with the idea.
The platform is a project of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Project, a joint effort between OSU, Washington State University and the US Department of Energy. It is one of three such centers established around the US to aid in research and development in the fledgling wave/tidal energy field. It is expected to be fully deployed late this year.
Oregon Sea Grant, which helped fund von Jouanne’s early proof-of-concept research, continues to work with researchers, developers and coastal communities to work through questions and issues surrounding marine renewable energy, from siting to possible conflicts with commercial fishing.
Posted by: Pat Kight | April 24, 2012 Comments Off |
CORVALLIS – After more than two years of intense field work and digital cartography, researchers have unveiled new maps of the seafloor off Oregon that cover more than half of the state’s territorial waters – a collaborative project that will provide new data for scientists, marine spatial planners, and the fishing industry.
The most immediate benefit will be improved tsunami inundation modeling for the Oregon coast, according to Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University, who led much of the field work.
“Understanding the nature of Oregon’s Territorial Sea is critical to sustaining sport and commercial fisheries, coastal tourism, the future of wave energy, and a range of other ocean-derived ecosystem services valued by Oregonians,” Goldfinger said. “The most immediate focus, though, is the threat posed by a major tsunami.
“Knowing what lies beneath the surface of coastal waters will allow much more accurate predictions of how a tsunami will propagate as it comes ashore,” he added. “We’ve also found and mapped a number of unknown reefs and other new features we’re just starting to investigate, now that the processing work is done.”
The mapping project was a collaborative effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, David Evans and Associations, and Fugro. It was funded by NOAA and the Oregon Department of State Lands.
The primary mapping platform was the vessel Pacific Storm, operated by the OSU Marine Mammal Institute. Oregon-based fishing vessels taking part in Oregon Sea Grant’s Scientist and Fisherman Exchange program – the F/V Michelle Ann, the F/V Delma Ann, and the F/V Miss Linda – assisted with ground truth sampling and video surveys.
Posted by: Pat Kight | February 9, 2012 Comments Off |
PORT ORFORD – Ocean Frontiers, a new feature-length film about ocean management and conservation, will launch its national tour in Port Orford, which stars in the film as an example of how science and fishing can work together to manage marine resources.
The debut screening starts at 5 pm Saturday, Feb. 11 at the Savoy Theatre in downtown Port Orford. followed by a reception in the nearby Community Building, with Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, First Lady Cylvia Hayes, representatives of state and local government and members of the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team (POORT) expected to attend. A second screening is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday.
The film will also be shown at the Performing Arts Center in Newport at 7 pm Feb. 22.
Port Orford is one of several US coastal communities featured in the 80-minute film, which tracks the evolution of marine resource management from a “maximum allowable catch” approach to a growing recognition that resources are finite, and need to be managed for the future as well as the present. The film explores the shift toward ecosystem-based management and marine spatial planning tools that rely on science, and an informed and engaged public. Communities from the Pacific Northwest to Boston Harbor, the Florida Keys, the Gulf of Mexico and even the cornfields of Iowa are featured.
POORT figures prominently in the film as an example of how resource users, scientists, conservationists and others can work together to help understand, protect and manage ocean areas for the benefit of the resource – and the people who depend on it. Ongoing collaboration between fishermen and scientists in the south coast community was a strong factor in the state’s decision to establish one of Oregon’s first marine reserves at Redfish Rocks, just off Port Orford.
Oregon Sea Grant has supported the community-based effort since its early days, helping bring fishermen and scientists together and providing information and assistance as the group grew and evolved. Sea Grant helped the community design and conduct surveys and interviews that let the town build its first long-form community profile to give resource managers greater insight into how fisheries reach deep into the community’s social and economic life. The format and interview has since been applied to other Oregon coastal towns, and is proving to be a model for communities elsewhere in the US.
Posted by: Eric Dickey | January 3, 2012 Comments Off |
NOAA Sea Grant has announced a funding opportunity for its Aquaculture Research Program 2012 to support the development of environmentally and economically sustainable ocean, coastal, or Great Lakes aquaculture.
Priorities for this FY 2012 competition include: Research to inform specific regulatory decisions; Research that supports multi-use spatial planning; and Socio-economic research targeted to understand aquaculture in a larger context. Proposals must be able to express how the proposed work will have a high probability of significantly advancing U.S. marine aquaculture development in the short-term (1-2 years) or medium-term (3-5 years).
To view the full announcement Go to www.grants.gov and perform a basic search using the Funding Opportunity Number: NOAA-OAR-SG-2012-2003249.
This is a two-stage competition, with preproposals and full proposals. Each stage has specific guidance and deadlines, stated in the announcement, with Preliminary Proposals due 2/7/2012, and Full Proposals due 4/17/2012. Applicants must submit a preproposal in order to be eligible to submit a full proposals. Preliminary Proposals are to be submitted directly to the National Office via e-mail.
Pay careful attention to the instructions and contact Sarah Kolesar, Research Coordinator for the Oregon Sea Grant Program (sarah.kolesar@oregonstate.edu, 541-737-8695) as soon as possible to discuss proposals.
Posted by: Pat Kight | December 19, 2011 Comments Off |
PORT ORFORD – As a new marine sanctuary takes shape off the coast of this southern Oregon town, researchers are using the area to study the life cycles and feeding patterns of rockfish and other species, in an effort to understand how much space a fish population needs to thrive.
Public Radio International’s Living on Earth looks at the work of OSU biologist and graduate researcher Tom Calvanese, who’s getting assistance from local fishermen as he works to learn more about the fish and their needs.
This unusual alliance between fishermen and scientists is becoming more common on Oregon’s coast, thanks in part to Oregon Sea Grant’s decades-long efforts to bring the two groups together to benefit from each other’s knowledge.
(The episode was originally produced for Ocean Gazing, an ocean-science podcast produced by Ari Daniel Shapiro for COSEE NOW (the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence – Networked Ocean World.)
Posted by: Eric Dickey | October 10, 2011 Comments Off |
Registration is now open for the OSU Marine Council and Oregon Sea Grant sponsored Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning Science Workshop. The workshop will be held November 29-30 at the OSU Alumni Center, and is open to all Oregon academic faculty. You can find out more information, register for the workshop, and register to give a brief presentation about your research at the following website:
TACOMA, Wash. - Oregon and Washington Sea Grant are co-hosting the 2013 National Working Waterfronts & Waterways Symposium March 25-28 in Tacoma.
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