Breaking Waves

Spring Whale Watch Week coincides with spring break for most Oregon schools and universities, and that makes March 23-30 a great time to head for the coast and look for whales.

Hundreds of giant gray whales, including females and their new calves, travel past Oregon on their way to their spring and summer feeding grounds off Alaska. Many come fairly close to shore, and it’s not unusual to see their spouts – and sometimes the animals themselves – as they swim northward.

OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm during Whale Watch Week, with special marine mammal programs and activities.

Trained volunteers will be stationed at prime whale-watching spots in coastal parks to help visitors learn how to spot the animals, and to share what they know about their life history, biology and migratory habits. Look for the “Whale Watching Spoken Here” signs.

Learn more:

• Whalespoken.org, the official Oregon Parks & Recreation whale-watch site, includes maps showing the best whale viewing areas along the coast.
• Free .pdf downloads of Oregon Sea Grant’s popular Gray Whales brochure, in English and Spanish versions.
• Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, a multidisciplinary program dedicated to the study of whales and other marine mammals.

Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute are jointly seeking to fill a new, full-time assistant- or associate-level professorship in marine mammal behavioral ecology.

The new faculty member will be based at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and will also serve as Sea Grant Extension marine mammal specialist. Duties include a combination of research, teaching and public outreach.

This is a fulltime, tenure-track position, with tenure offered at .50 FTE. A PhD. is required. Rank will depend on qualifications.

The selected candidate will be expected to conduct original research and provide statewide, national and international expertise on marine mammals with an emphasis on cetacean ecology. He or she will conduct programs on appropriate basic science, conservation, wildlife management and natural resources issues, and will be expected to raise funds for annual research objectives and to help build the OSU marine mammal endowment.

The full position description and application is available on the OSU Jobs site. For full consideration, applications must be submitted by Dec. 15, 2012.

Learn more:

• OSU Marine Mammal Institute
• Oregon Sea Grant Extension

One in four teachers who use live animals for classroom science projects report that they’ve released the animals into the wild when the projects are done, according to a new Sea Grant study – and the practice may be helping to spread some nasty invasive species.

The study, led by Oregon Sea Grant Extension’s invasive species expert Sam Chan, was presented at this week’s national meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland.

“Live organisms are a critical element for learning and we don’t want to imply that they should not be used in the classroom,” said Chan. “But some of our schools – and the biological supply houses that provide their organisms – are creating a potential new pathway for non-native species to become invasive.

“We need to work through the whole chain and educate both the teachers and suppliers about the potential damages – both environmental and economic – that invasive species may trigger,” added Chan,  former chair of the Oregon Invasive Species Council.

The study surveyed nearly 2,000 teachers in Florida, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, California, Connecticut, British Columbia and Ontario. Conducted primarily by researchers from Sea Grant programs in those states, it also included focus groups and interviews with teachers, curriculum specialists and biological supply house owners and managers.

The researchers found teachers using as many as 1,000 different organisms in the classroom, including many frequently listed species identified as known or potential aquatic invaders,  including elodea, crayfishes, amphibians, mosquito fish, red-eared slider turtles and other aquatic plants and snails.

Learn more:

• Read the complete story from OSU News & Research Communications
• Additional coverage from Science Daily, The Chronicle Journal, and MSNBC
• Visit Oregon Sea Grant’s aquatic invasive species page

(Photo credit: Jennifer England, Franklin Elementary School, Corvallis)

Susan Hilber Piacenza, an Oregon State University PhD candidate, has been awarded a prestigious National Marine Fisheries Service fellowship to study population dynamics of threatened and endangered sea turtles.

The fellowship, will provide $115,000 over the next  three years to support Piacenza’s work on the green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas. The turtle, considered threatened or endangered in most US and Mexican waters, appears to be recovering in other parts of the world.  “Not only is this good news for green sea turtles,” Piacenza said, “but it also represents an invaluable opportunity to study what happens to a large vertebrate population as it recovers from serious population decline.”

So far, signs of positive population growth among C. mydas colonies in Hawaii and Florida has been inferred from nesting beach surveys. What’s missing – and what Piacenza plans to study – is broader data on what happens to the animals after they hatch, and throughout their lives, and how that information fits into population estimates and trends.

The research could be useful to biologists and managers seeking to understand how populations of other threatened and endangered animals change over time, and as a population comes back from the brink. Solid, data-driven forecasting could also help scientists and the public understand how different conservation and management strategies might affect threatened animal populations.

Piacenza is working with researchers at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center Turtle Program in Miami, FL, and the Pacific Island Fisheries’ Marine Turtle Research Group in Honolulu, HI. Her PhD adviser in the OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife  is Dr. Selina Heppell.

The award is one of five population dynamics fellowships nationwide by NOAA/NMFS this year, and the first ever to an OSU graduate student. Piacenza’s application was sponsored by Oregon Sea Grant.

Learn more about the NOAA/NMFS Fellowships

Groundbreaking work by our Free-Choice Learning Lab at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. Be sure to view to the end!

The causes and effects of hypoxia have been confounding marine scientists since the 1970s, when so-called “dead zones” first started appearing in oceans and large lakes. Currently there are more than 400 dead zones worldwide.

How did this happen, and how can it be fixed?

As Nathan Gilles, Oregon Sea Grant’s 2011 Science Communication Fellow, spent time with Sea Grant-funded researchers Francis Chan, Lorenzo Ciannelli, and Stephen Brandt, he uncovered a rich and complex story. That story is revealed in Oregon Sea Grant’s new publication, Hypoxia:How Is It Affecting Ocean Life, and Why?

The publication is available for purchase, and as a free download.

More on hypoxia from Oregon Sea Grant:

• Video: What is acidification? How does it affect marine animals and ecosystems? In three short videos, Dr. Richard Feely of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab discusses recent findings about ocean acidification and what it means for the future.
• Related Sea Grant research:
  • Understanding, Forecasting and Communicating the Linkages Between Hypoxia and Ocean Acidification in Oregon’s Coastal Ocean
  • Developing Realistic Metrics of Acidification Stress for Commercially Important Bivalves in Variable Habitats

NEWPORT – The Visitor Center at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center has acquired a new octopus for its central display and teaching tank, and aquarists report that the animal is lively, alert and adapting to her quarantine tank in the animal husbandry wing.

According to Dennis Glaze, aquatic animal health and husbandry specialist, “Our new octopus arrived in fantastic shape on Wednesday, Pearl Harbor Day. Furthermore, introduction into her temporary holding tank went remarkably smoothly, and not in typical ‘new octopus’ fashion, she seemed quite comfortable hanging around up front of the tank near the viewing window.”

Typically, the Visitor Center quarantines new octopuses for 30 days to acclimate them to human contact and make sure they’re free of disease or parasites. Since this animal came from outside Oregon waters, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is requiring a 60-day quarantine as a precaution against introducing non-native and potentially invasive organisms into Yaquina Bay via the tank’s seawater system.

The new animal will replace Ursula, the  giant Pacific octopus that has occupied the tank since October 2010. The animals are relatively short-lived, and typically stay at the center no longer than a year before being returned to the sea to complete their life cycles. Aquarists began looking for a new octopus when Ursula began showing signs of aging, including laying eggs on the tank’s walls.

Glaze called the newest octopus “a beautiful specimen, about half the size of Ursula.” As with all new arrivals the animal husbandry team watches for signs that the octopus is adapting to her new surroundings, particularly when she starts eating. Some octopuses take weeks to reach out for food, but Glaze said “this little beauty ate the second day of being here at HMSC.”

Update: Since the in-tank Octocam is out of commission (it’s being replaced with a more sophisticated model), the VC tech gurus have focused a temporary Webcam on the quarantine tank. Check the OctoCam page for a sneak preview of the new animal and watch her get acquainted with our animal husbandry staff!

The octopus tank, which is used to teach visitors about octopus biology and behavior, has been a central feature of the Visitor Center since it’s opening, and is among the most popular exhibits with the visiting public. For the past two years, its popularity has spread to to the Internet via the live, streaming OctoCam. (The in-tank camera is currently offline for replacement by a newer, more sophisticated model.)