Two new videos from Oregon Sea Grant encourage boaters to help keep our waterways clean by emptying their portable toilets and holding tanks at designated facilities at marinas and short-term tie-up docks.
The videos, “Where to Empty Onboard Portable Toilets in Oregon” and “Where to Empty Onboard Holding Tanks in Oregon,” feature Jenny East, boater outreach coordinator with Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon State University Extension Service. They are part of her ongoing efforts to educate recreational boaters about the availability of facilities at marinas for disposing of onboard sewage.
Jenny East empties an onboard portable toilet.
The new videos join a dozen others on the subject, available on a YouTube playlist here.
Photos of East and some of the facilities she demonstrates in the videos are available for download from our “Boater Outreach” album on Flickr.
The videos were filmed and edited by Oregon Sea Grant videographer Vanessa Cholewczynski in collaboration with the Oregon State Marine Board.
Scientists say there is a 30 percent chance of a massive earthquake and tsunami striking the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years. One way coastal residents and visitors can prepare for such a disaster is to learn evacuation routes.
A new video from Oregon Sea Grant, “Tsunami Quests,” reveals how the program is helping coastal residents and visitors prepare. One way it does this is by teaching people how to create and use self-guided evacuation routes modeled after a treasure hunt.
In these hunts, which are called Quests, walkers follow a map and a series of educational clues about their surroundings to reach higher ground. At the end, they find a hidden box that contains a guest book and rubber stamp to mark their accomplishment. The aim is that by exploring these routes for fun in their free time, residents and visitors will later know where to flee in the event of a tsunami.
Background
In February 2016, Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) organized a series of workshops at the Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) in Newport, Oregon, to bring educators, state parks personnel, researchers and emergency management experts together to discuss how communities can prepare for tsunamis. Participants also learned how to help students create a tsunami Quest.
In the spring of 2016, workshop attendees imparted their knowledge to 120 Newport seventh-graders at HMSC. The students listened to presentations from engineers and geologists, studied tsunami inundation maps and interpretive signs, calculated how fast they would need to walk to escape, and learned about soil liquefaction. They also walked an evacuation route that starts at the OSG-operated Visitor Center at HMSC, which is expected to be flooded during a tsunami, and ends about a mile away, atop Safe Haven Hill. The students created a Tsunami Quest for that route and tested the activity on community members and two classes of fifth-graders in Newport. Their Quest is online (“HMSC Tsunami Quest,” http://bit.ly/2s0O1YI). To date, nearly 300 people have walked the HMSC Tsunami Quest.
Partners
Partners in the Tsunami Quests effort include the Lincoln County School District, Oregon State University, Oregon Parks and Recreation, Hatfield Marine Science Center, the Gray Family Foundation, and the OSUEA Hoecker Award.
Watch
You can watch the three-minute video here:
Tsunami Quests was filmed and edited by Vanessa Cholewczynski and Tiffany Woods.
The full video (15:45) comprises six discrete segments, starting with a behind-the-scenes tour of the area where new and sick animals are quarantined and treated (0:52). Other segments explain how aquarists feed the animals (3:54), take care of the octopus on display (7:10), care for coral (9:27), propagate coral (11:39) and clean the tanks (13:16).
If you’d prefer to watch one or more individual segments rather than the entire video, you may do so by clicking on the appropriate link(s) below:
Oregon Sea Grant operates the Visitor Center, which features interactive exhibits and attracts more than 150,000 visitors each year. It is home to Oregon Sea Grant’s marine education program for K-12 students and teachers.
The video was filmed and edited by Oregon Sea Grant videographer Vanessa Cholewczynski.
The Hermes Creative Awards are administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. According to Hermes, “AMCP judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.”
This year’s competition attracted about 6,000 entries from around the United States, Canada and numerous other countries, according to Hermes.
Oregon Sea Grant’s communications team has produced eight videos that teach maintenance staff at marinas and parks how to take care of sewage disposal facilities for recreational boaters.
A need for training was identified after OSG Extension’s boating outreach coordinator, Jenny East, met with staff at various facilities, checked the equipment for wear and tear, and reported her findings to the Oregon State Marine Board (OSMB).
Each of the eight videos focuses on a specific topic and can be viewed alone or as part of two longer compilations. The combined video about pumpout stations, for example, provides tips on how to perform weekly, quarterly and annual maintenance tasks; winterize them; and troubleshoot common problems. Another video addresses similar topics but for dump stations for portable toilets.
OSG’s videographer, Vanessa Cholewczynski, shot and edited the videos; OSG managing editor, Rick Cooper, produced the music; and the OSMB provided input on scripts and the overall concept. Funding was provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Clean Vessel Act grant program.
(Photo of Jenny East by Vanessa Cholewczynski, Oregon Sea Grant)
Two new videos from Oregon Sea Grant demonstrate how to collect and identify aquatic insects and test water quality using kits available from StreamWebs.
The kits are among several that educators can borrow from StreamWebs, a program administered by Oregon Sea Grant. StreamWebs provides educators with field equipment, data sheets, lesson plans and training so they can teach students how to collect data about the health of waterways. It also provides an online database where students can enter and analyze the information they gathered.
Both videos were produced by Oregon Sea Grant’s Renee O’Neill and Vanessa Cholewczynski and shot and edited by Cholewczynski. Special thanks to Angela Clegg with the South Santiam Watershed Council; students from Foster Elementary School in Sweet Home, Oregon; Grayson Johnston; and Zethan Brandenburger.
Oregon Sea Grant has won an APEX Award of Excellence in the Electronic Media-Video category for its online video, Responding to the Risks of Marine Debris: Derelict Fishing Gear.
According to APEX, there were 165 entries in the Electronic Media category, and awards were based on “excellence in graphic design, editorial content and the success of the entry…in achieving overall communication effectiveness and excellence.”
Responding to the Risks of Marine Debris is a production of Oregon Sea Grant in cooperation with NOAA West and the west coast Sea Grant programs. You can view the six-minute video at https://vimeo.com/92878422
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.
