HMSC Currents

Agricultural Sciences and Marine Sciences Business Center (AMBC) employees as well as Agricultural Experiment Station administrative personnel participated in this day and a half training event.  Funding for this event was provided by the College of Agricultural Sciences.
Over a day and a half of events, attendees participated in nine training sessions.  Program sessions included Customer Service and Time Management which was presented by Paul Biwan from the Office of Human Resources, F&A Rate Proposal /  OSU Fee Book presented by Charlotte Rooks from OSU Business Affairs, EmpCenter Review presented by Patty Deluca from OSU Business Affairs, CAS Grant Proposals presented by Liz Etherington from the College of Agricultural Sciences’ administration.  AMBC personnel also presented sessions: Graduate Fee Remissions and other budget issues presented by Chris Holdridge and Lela Mazzo, HR/Payroll Process Flow presented by Jayne Parker, Nancy Bremner, Itsue Pfund and Sheryl Powell, Quality in Perspective presented by Lucille Valley and Best Practices on Invoice and PO Entry presented by Dwight Brimley.

The conference was held on April 11^th and 12^th 2013 at the Best Western Agate Beach Inn in Newport, Oregon.  Jack Breen, Business Center Manager for AMBC and Chief Business Officer of the college welcomed the 50 attendees that participated this year, including employees from locations such as Klamath Falls, Union and Burns.  This figure included both participants and session instructors.  The Best Western Agate Beach Inn was used as a program, meal and lodging facility for this event.
In addition to the nine training sessions, attendees toured OSU’s Newport facilities where they learned about research being conducted at the Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station (COMES), the Marine Mammal Institute (MMI) and the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resource Studies (CIMRS).  Presenters included Janet Webster, HMSC Interim Director, Gilbert Sylvia, COMES Director, Bruce Mate, MMI Director and Kathleen O’Malley, COMES Assistant Professor.  Some participants met and touched the HMSC Visitor Center’s resident octopus named Miss Oscar.

The conference group also learned about the work that has been done in educating the Newport campus community on Tsunami preparedness and awareness.  Groups that visit the OSU-Newport campus are now informed where the nearest Tsunami “SAFE” zone is located.  The closest one to the HMSC Visitor Center is a 14 minute walk away.  It is called Safe Haven Hill.

The Hatfield Marine Science Center recently acquired a piece of the Japanese Tsunami Dock that washed ashore on Agate Beach back in June 2012.  A picture of this dock section is shown below:

Evening hours provided participants with the opportunity to get together in the hospitality room where they got to know their colleagues in an informal social environment.  The Hatfield Marine Science Center funded the stocking of the hospitality room with lots of snacks, soda pop and water.

In evaluating the conference, participants felt that the overall benefits included being able to network, connect and communicate with their colleagues as well as improve their understanding of current OSU business processes and procedures.

The Newport Retreat Committee was comprised of Chelle Boswell, Jeff Wiseman, Shanda McCloskey, and Bob Moch all from the AMBC-Newport Business Office as well as Carol Cole from the COMES-Newport office.  Program session coordination, agenda preparation and AV transport was handled by Dwight Brimley in the AMBC-Corvallis Office.

The April 2013 issue of HMSC’s donor newsletter, Upwelling, is available online at http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/friendsnewsletter.html. This newsletter is sent to members of the Friends of the Hatfield Marine Science Center, who support us with scholarships and awards, equipment purchases, volunteer hours, housing needs and in a multitude of other ways. 

Join us at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center on Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 10am to 4pm. See hmsc.oregonstate.edu/marinescienceday for more information!

You’re invited! Marine Science Day at HMSC, reminiscent of its predecessor SeaFest, will take visitors behind-the-scenes for an open house. Your hosts will be scientists and educators from the growing marine science community on Newport’s South Beach: Oregon State University and the federal and state agencies of HMSC, as well as the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the new NOAA Marine Operations Center – Pacific. Marine Science Day is Saturday April 14, from 10am to 4pm at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon.

In addition to special activities in the Visitor Center, including a sea turtle necropsy, visitors will meet scientists and experience cutting edge marine research first-hand in HMSC’s marine research labs and classrooms. Visitors can view a working genetics lab, try their hand at collecting biological data from fish, plankton and even a shrimp parasite, explore novel oceangoing and ocean floor instrument platforms and meet the scientists who designed them. HMSC’s Marine Mammal Institute Director Bruce Mate will give a presentation on how satellite telemetry is revealing the secrets of whale migration. Guided tours will include HMSC’s seawater facilities and the aquatic animal husbandry lab.

Don’t miss this special opportunity to experience the innovation and synergy that makes HMSC unique. More information, including program, tours, and special events, is available at hmsc.oregonstate.edu.

Collaborative HMSC research partners include six federal and state agencies: Oregon State University, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey, US Department of Agriculture, Oregon Coast Aquarium

by Mark Floyd

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An estimated 20,000 people died or are missing after a massive earthquake-induced tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, yet some 200,000 people were in the inundation zone at the time.

The fact that 90 percent of the coastal region’s residents and visitors evacuated effectively is a tribute to planning and community drills, said Patrick Corcoran, an Oregon State University education and outreach specialist, who just returned from a disaster symposium at United Nations University in Japan. Although some Oregon communities have been proactive, most are so overwhelmed meeting immediate needs that tsunami preparedness is not a priority.

“The small size of Oregon coastal communities relative to the magnitude of the hazard also plays a role,” Corcoran said. “Expecting these small communities to prepare for a level of safety for seasonal homeowners and visitors from throughout the state would be somewhat akin to Portland hosting the Olympic Games. They couldn’t do it alone.”

“To be fair, the Japanese have been dealing with this threat for hundreds of years and it has been on our minds for a decade or so,” he added. “But we had better start taking the eventuality of an earthquake and tsunami a lot more seriously.”

“A vast majority of the fatalities in Japan were among the elderly and a good portion of the others were family members and emergency personnel who went in after them when they realized they hadn’t been evacuated. Traffic jams cost lives.”

Corcoran said state and local agencies in Oregon have begun taking action, including producing new evacuation maps and improving communication and incident command plans. “As good as our local emergency officials are, they will be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the circumstances,” Corcoran said. “Preparation must begin with the individual, then focus on mutual aid among neighbors, and finally on public aid and assistance. Businesses, too, must support the safety of their employees and customers.”

There are several examples of coastal communities preparing for an earthquake and tsunami.

•   Cannon Beach has commissioned evacuation maps and inundation models, hired a community preparedness coordinator, explored a vertical evacuation structure, and is looking into caching supplies at evacuation sites;

•   The Seaside School District is studying relocating all of its schools on a common campus outside the inundation zone;

•   OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport has increased its educational efforts on earthquakes and tsunamis, and held evacuation drills for employees.

“The question,” Corcoran said, “is whether we are preparing at a level commensurate with the risk.”

Full story

Houses above the inundation zone in this Japanese village survived intact, while everything below was destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. (photo by Patrick Corcoran, Oregon State University, 2012)

The Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at Oregon State University has received a three-year, $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a multi-sensor array to record the interactions – including impacts – of birds and bats on the blades, platforms and towers of wind turbines.

“Unfortunately, the usual way to document the impact of wind turbines on birds and bats is to collect the carcasses,” said Robert Suryan, an OSU seabird expert who is principal investigator on the project. “That would be hard to do out in the ocean. Even on shore, surveys are limited at large or remote facilities and can be compromised by scavengers that remove the carcasses.”

So the researchers are coming up with a different approach – synchronizing an array of sensors that will include accelerometers to measure variations in blade movement from impact, visual and infrared cameras, and acoustic devices to record strikes and identify the bird or bat involved. The monitoring system will be designed to run continuously and on multiple turbines at once to estimate the potential impact of the entire wind farm.

Click here for the full story

OSU Oceanographer Jack Barth kicked off the 2012 “Science on Tap” series, sponsored by HMSC, to an enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowd earlier this week. Rogue’s Brewer’s on the Bay on Newport’s South Beach waterfront hosted the event on January 24th. Rogue generously offered up a Tuesday, their traditional Aloha “Hawaiian Shirt” Night, which made for a tropical atmosphere on what turned out to be another wild and windy Newport night.

Barth’s presentation, “New Eyes on our Changing Ocean: Underwater Robotic Gliders and the Ocean Observatories Initiative” introduced the use of autonomous underwater gliders and other emerging technologies for remote ocean observation and research. Barth brought a rather impressive show-and-tell item – an actual working glider – so audience members could visualize the undersea data collection methods he described. Barth’s research team uses gliders to explore the relationships between ocean circulation and ecosystems in coastal waters, including low-oxygen (hypoxic) zones off the coast of Oregon, and has logged over 51,000 km of measurements over the last six years.

Barth is a Professor of Oceanography and Associate Dean for Research in Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He presently serves on the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council’s (OPAC) Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee and was a member of NSF’s Observatory Steering Committee that launched the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). For more on Professor Barth’s research, see this recent article in OSU’s research magazine, Terra.

Look for upcoming Science on Tap events, sponsored by the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, on the HMSC website events list.

For the second consecutive year, an international team of scientists has tracked a whale via satellite from one of the world’s most endangered populations to the West Coast of the United States from the waters off Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

Last year, the saga of “Flex” captured the attention of the public as the male, 13-year-old western gray whale journeyed across the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean to Vancouver Island and down to Oregon before the tag finally quit working.

Varvara is the second Russian western gray whale to visit the North American coast in as many years. (Photo, Oregon State University)

This year, they are tracking “Varvara,” a 9-year-old female western gray whale that has again surprised scientists by not only coming to the West Coast – but by apparently heading for a known breeding ground of eastern gray whales in the San Ignacio Lagoon of the Sea of Cortez. Varvara took a different route across the Bering Sea than did Flex but both moved swiftly down the West Coast upon arriving in North America.

Bruce Mate is the director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, whose team tagged the endangered whale in September and has watched her make the 6,000-mile-plus trek over the past two months. He said her journey is more than a feel-good story, such as that depicted in the new film, “Big Miracle.”

Varvara’s adventure has tremendous ecological and management significance, Mate says.

Read the full story.

In case you’re looking for something to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Ten Rivers Food Web is hosting a Sunday film series this month and into February at Oregon Coast Community College (OCCC) in South Beach. It’s focus is local fisheries, farms & food issues.

More information and schedule here.

For more local sustainability information, stop by the HMSC Sustainability Committee website.