Category Archives: ecology

Public forum aims to demystify ocean acidification, hypoxia

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How is Oregon's ocean affected by hypoxia and acidification?TILLAMOOK – Hypoxia and ocean acidification get a lot of press, but how many people know what these phenomena are, what causes them and what they mean for marine species and coastal communities? Now’s the chance to find out, in an Oct. 23 public forum that aims to take some of the mystery out of the science behind measuring, understanding and minimizing the effects of of these ocean conditions.

The forum, starting at 6:30 pm in rooms 214-215 at Tillamook Bay Community College, 4301 3rd St., is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is encouraged, but not required. For more information, visit the PISCO Website.

Organized by the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Ocean (PISCO) and Oregon Sea Grant, the forum will focus on cutting edge research by scientists from many disciplines, and how resource managers and industries are responding.  A series of speakers will address:

  • The definitions of ocean acidification and coastal hypoxia, and how they are related – Francis Chan, OSU Zoology/PISCO
  • Why this is happening off our coast and what makes Oregon vulnerable – Burke Hales, OSU College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS).
  • How scientists are monitoring the ocean for these changes – Jack Barth (CEOAS/PISCO)
  • The impacts of acidification on shellfish hatcheries – Alan Barton (Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery)

Speakers will be followed by a question-and-answer panel featuring scientists and representatives of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The event is hosted by PISCO through funding from Oregon Sea Grant.

Crater Lake closure follows Sea Grant invasives workshop

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Diver in Crater Lake (US Parks Service photo)This week’s closure of Crater Lake to divers follows National Parks Service participation in a recent Sea Grant-sponsored workshop on the legal and regulatory challenges to keeping two significant invasive species out of waterways in western states.

The NPS announced the immediate, temporary closure on Wednesday, saying it needed time to establish protocols to minimize the risk of contaminating the pristine lake with invasive species. The service anticipates that the protocols will be in place before the beginning of the 2013 season, and will require divers to take precautionary measures before entering the lake.

The 1,943-foot-deep Crater Lake, the centerpiece of a 249-square-mile national park in the southern Oregon Cascades, is  considered the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest lake in the world. Its relative isolation, along with rigorous management of the surrounding Crater Lake National Park watershed, has helped make it one of the cleanest, as well.

Of immediate concern to the park – and to representatives of state and federal agencies and Western states’ attorneys general who attended last week’s workshop in Phoenix, AZ – are highly invasive zebra and quagga mussels, already a plague in many US waters and just beginning to show up in the West.

The fast growing mussels can rapidly colonize on boats and other recreational water gear, and  can be easily spread from one waterway to another. Once established, they can foul docks, piers, water intakes and power systems, and – of more direct concern in Crater Lake – alter entire ecosystems by outfeeding and outbreeding native species.

While the mature mussels are easy to see and – with some effort – remove, their  larvae start life at a microscopic size, making them difficult to detect and destroy.

The  Phoenix meeting, convened by Oregon Sea Grant, the National Sea Grant Law Center and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, engaged state, federal and local agencies – including representatives of the attorneys general of all 15 Western states –  in a discussion of legal and regulatory frameworks that might help keep the invaders out of Western waters where they have yet to appear – or have just begun to show up. In addition, participants talked about how they might educate the recreational public about the problem, and protocols for decontaminating gear when it’s hauled out of one body of water and transported to another.

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Study guide available for Ocean Frontiers film

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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

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Register now for Master Naturalist program

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Registration is open now for the Oregon Master Naturalist online education and training program, training Oregonians in the state’s natural and cultural history, geology and ecology, and in the skills needed to help interpret those things for the public.

The roughly 40-hour course, offered only online, is a new offering from Oregon State University Extension, tying together elements of older Extension “master” programs, including the former Sea Grant Extension Master Watershed Steward program. It’s intended to train and certify people as knowledgeable volunteers for natural resources programs, agencies, organizations and other groups in their communities.

Participants can become a certified Oregon Master Naturalist after completing approximately 40 hours of instructor-led online instruction and a minimum of one Ecoregion Specialization – in–person courses, currently under development, that will be offered at various locations throughout the state. Once certified,  Oregon Master Naturalists fulfill volunteer and continuing education responsibilities each year to maintain certification.

For complete information about registration and fees, visit Oregon Master Naturalist Online.

 

 

OSU grad student wins NMFS fellowship

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Susan PiacenzaSusan 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

Japanese dock carries potential invaders

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ODFW workers clean marine organisms from Japanese dockAGATE BEACH – A large section of a dock, ripped from the Japanese shore by last year’s tsunami and washed up this week on the Oregon coast, brought with it  a host of potentially unwelcomed visitors.

Scientists at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center said the cement float contains about 13 pounds of organisms per square foot – an estimated 100 tons of wet plant and animal life. As of Thursday they had gathered living samples sample of multiple species of   barnacles, starfish, urchins, anemones, amphipods, worms, mussels, limpets, snails, solitary tunicates and algae – and there are dozens of species overall.

“This float is an island unlike any transoceanic debris we have ever seen,” said John Chapman, an OSU researcher who studies marine invasive species . “Drifting boats lack such dense fouling communities, and few of these species are already on this coast. Nearly all of the species we’ve looked at were established on the float before the tsunami; few came after it was at sea.”

Chapman said it was “mind-boggling” how these organisms survived their trek across the Pacific Ocean. The low productivity of open-ocean waters should have starved at least some of the organisms, he said.

“It is as if the float drifted over here by hugging the coasts, but that is of course impossible,” Chapman said. “Life on the open ocean, while drifting, may be more gentle for these organisms than we initially suspected. Invertebrates can survive for months without food and the most abundant algae species may not have had the normal compliment of herbivores. Still, it is surprising.”

Jessica Miller, an Oregon State University marine ecologist, said that a brown algae (Undaria pinnatifida), commonly called wakame, was present across most of the dock – and plainly stood out when she examined it in the fading evening light. She said the algae is native to the western Pacific Ocean in Asia, and has invaded several regions including southern California. The species identification was confirmed by OSU phycologist Gayle Hansen.

“To my knowledge it has not been reported north of Monterey, Calif., so this is something we need to watch out for,” Miller said.

Miller said the plan developed by the state through the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon State Parks is to scrape the dock and to bag all of the biological material to minimize potential spread of non-native species. But there is no way of telling if any of the organisms that hitchhiked aboard the float from Japan have already disembarked in nearshore waters.

“We have no evidence so far that anything from this float has established on our shores,” said Chapman. “That will take time. However, we are vulnerable. One new introduced species is discovered in Yaquina Bay, only two miles away, every year. We hope that none of these species we are finding on this float will be among the new discoveries in years to come.”

Read the complete story from OSU News & Research Information

(Photo credit: OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport)

Oregon Sea Grant wins two silver awards

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Oregon Sea Grant has won two Silver Awards of Distinction in the 18th Annual Communicator Awards competition, one each for its “Aquatic Animal Health” brochure and its Cascade Head Scenic Research Area video.

The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 550+ member organization of professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts. See www.iavisarts.org for more information.

According to Linda Day, executive director of the IAVA, “The pool of entries we received for this year’s Communicator Awards serves as a true testament to the innovative ideas and capabilities of communications and marketing professionals around the world. On behalf of the entire Academy, we congratulate this year’s Communicator Award Entrants and Winners for their passion and dedication. We are humbled to be given the opportunity to recognize such amazing work.”

This year’s Communicator Awards received  more than 6,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world. Visit www.communicatorawards.com for more information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Oregon Sea Grant publication probes the mysteries of hypoxia

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Hypoxia: How Is It Affecting Ocean Life and Why?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:

 

Science on Tap: Ocean science and good beer in Newport

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Steller sea lionsNEWPORT – Oregon State University marine mammal researcher Markus Horning  steps to the bar for this month’s Science on Tap lecture, with The secret lives or seals: Using high-tech marvels to pry into ocean depths.

The talk, co-sponsored by the Hatfield Marine Science Center and Rogue Ale, starts at 6 pm  March 15 at Brewers on the Bay, on the South Beach waterfront south of the Yaquina Bay Bridge. Admission to the family-friendly event is free, and food and beverage will be available for purchase from the pub’s menu.

Horning, a pinniped ecologist with OSU’s Newport-based Marine Mammal Institute,   studies seals and sea lions in Oregon, Alaska and the Antarctic using telemetry – the science and technology of remote measurement via such devices as satellite-linked data recorders and tags.

The technology allows Horning and other scientists to monitor rarely observed aspects of marine mammal life in remote locations around Alaska and the Antarctic. Using advanced monitoring technology, researchers are able to follow the life – and death – of individual animals in the Bering Sea or under the Antarctic ice.

In recent research, the high-tech tools have helped show that more juvenile Steller sea lions are falling to predators than had been thought, casting doubt on prospects for the animals’ ability to recover from recent population decline in Alaskan waters.

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(Photo: Steller sea lions, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service)

OPB highlights Sea Grant researcher

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Oregon Sea Grant’s Guillermo Giannico and his study of the role flooded farmlands can play in fish survival are the subject of a new episode of Oregon Field Guide, broadcast on on Oregon Public Television this week.

Giannico, a fisheries ecologist with OSU’s Department of Fisheries & Wildlife who also serves as Sea Grant Extension fisheries specialist, was part of a team that set out a few years ago to learn whether dry-all-summer ditches that criss-cross Willamette Valley agricultural lands might house fish during the wet winter months.

What they found surprised them – and some of the farmers, too: A thriving winter habitat for several species of native fish.

Watch the Oregon Field Guide video, Ditch Fish:

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