Category Archives: research

Cancer-killers from the sea?

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Kerry McPhail is on the hunt for the most powerful products in nature.

Foraging the seas of Panama all the way to the Eastern Cape of South Africa, she brings marine organisms back to Oregon State University to unlock the compounds’ hidden power in the hopes of finding targets that shoot down cancer cells.

McPhail, an associate professor of medicinal chemistry in the School of Pharmacy, is trying, with funding  from NOAA via Oregon Sea Grant, to find compounds in natural products that can help fight cancer. …

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New publication discusses effective stakeholder engagement in marine planning

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A new publication from Oregon Sea Grant, Knowledge, Capacity, and Needs for Effective Stakeholder Engagement in Marine Planning, examines the key findings from a study of marine spatial planning efforts on the west coast.

In response to the many existing and emerging demands on coastal and ocean resources, President Obama established by Executive Order the National Ocean Policy (NOP) in 2010, identifying marine spatial planning (MSP) as a mechanism to reduce conflicts and improve management. On the west coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was designated as a federal co-lead for implementation. NOAA’s Western Regional Collaboration Team (NOAA West), a cross-cutting line office team, and the west coast Sea Grant programs initiated assessment of NOAA’s knowledge, capacity, and needs related to MSP through focus groups and a survey.

This 39-page publication reveals the results of this study and makes recommendations for improvements in the MSP process. You can download a PDF of the publication free of charge here.

New fact sheet describes different types of wave-energy devices

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Wave-Energy-Devices-coverToday about 87 percent of the world’s energy consumption relies on nonrenewable energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. The burning of these fossil fuels releases pollutants into the atmosphere and can result in environmental damage. An abundant and promising source of renewable energy exists in the forms of wave, tidal, marine current, ocean thermal energy conversion, and salinity.

This two-page fact sheet, A Primer on Wave Energy: Wave-Energy Devices, describes nine different types of wave-energy devices currently under development or nearing completion.

You can download the publication for free here.

Register-Guard: Changing ocean chemistry threatens marine life

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The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery on the state’s north coast watched oyster larvae die en masse for three years in a row in the mid-2000s — depriving oyster farms along the entire West Coast of seed oysters.

Florence crabber Al Pazar saw baby octopuses, an inch or two long, climb up his crab lines to escape the sea waters in the 2005 season. When he pulled up his pots, the crab were dead.

Eugene fisherman Ryan Rogers, who drags in great piles of salmon on an Alaska purse seiner, has instead brought up nets full of jellyfish in recent years.

“Sometimes we’ll catch 4,000 or 5,000 pounds of jellyfish. They spray all around. We get stung,” he said. “It makes it difficult to bring your net in. You have to let it go and lose the salmon that are in your net.”

Scientists — including many at Oregon State University — are beginning to define the cause of these events. They call it ocean acidification and hypoxia.

Wind, currents and ocean chemistry conspire to create pools of corrosive waters that can be lethal to key commercial species in Northwest waters — and favorable to some nuisance species, such as jellyfish. …

The Eugene Register-Guard examines what OSU scientists – some of them working with Oregon Sea Grant funding – are learning about the causes and consequences of ocean acidification.

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New publication offers insights from a NOAA-Sea Grant project

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A new publication from Oregon Sea Grant, Climate Field Notes, distills the results of a multi-year, multi-state SARP-Report-coverproject funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP).

Oregon Sea Grant led this project, which used a risk-communication framework to help coastal communities respond to the effects of a changing climate. Climate Field Notes documents the results of projects in eight states, including Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.

The report includes discussion of social science methodologies, definitions and usefulness of resilience, the roles of leadership and boundary organizations, user-centered communication approaches, and lessons learned from practitioners in the field.

Primary authors of the report are Joe Cone, Pat Corcoran, Miriah Russo Kelly, and Kirsten Winters.

You can download Climate Field Notes here.

 

South coast native oysters may survive acidification threat

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Oyster baskets at Whiskey Creek Shellfish HatcheryCOOS BAY – While some West coast oyster stocks are threatened by rising ocean acidity, native oysters on Oregon’s south coast seem to be doing well.

Netarts Bay’s Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery — which produces much of the oyster seed used by commercial farms in the region —has experienced a decline in production that Oregon State University researchers traced directly to ocean acidification.

But biologist Steve Rumrill, director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shellfish monitoring program at the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, suspects that the shallow parts of Coos Bay “may be able to act as a sort of buffer,” protecting native Olympia oysters in that area from the shell-destroying effects of ocean acidification.

Another clue could lie in the oysters’ breeding habits, according to George Waldbusser, an OSU biologist who studies oyster reproduction and survival.

“Olympias are brooders,” Waldbusser said, referring to the species’ trait of carrying eggs in an internal chamber for several weeks after fertilization, whereas the Pacific oysters bred in Netarts Bay broadcast their fertilized eggs into the open water, where they are directly exposed to chemical changes at an earlier point in their life cycles, when they may be more vulnerable.

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OSU secures critical funding to continue ocean acidification research

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Oregon State University will receive funds that will help the West Coast’s shellfish industry in its fight against ocean acidification, thanks largely to the efforts of Oregon state Senator Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose). Receipt of these funds will give a critical boost to Oregon State University’s and the shellfish industry’s efforts to reduce the negative impacts of ocean acidification on shellfish production.

House Bill 5008 allocated $250,000 to Oregon State University. A portion of the funds will be used to continue OSU’s efforts to improve the resilience of oyster to ocean acidification through its selective breeding program at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. The remaining funds will be dedicated to OSU’s collaboration with industry leaders at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery (see “The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Acid Tests” in the current issue of Confluence) on Netarts Bay as they continue to identify better ways to manage the negative effects of ocean acidification on shellfish larvae.

You can read the rest of this story here.

Join Oregon Sea Grant at da Vinci Days!

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Join Oregon Sea Grant at da Vinci Days this Saturday and Sunday, July 20-21, on Oregon State University’s lower campus in Corvallis, Oregon. Discover interesting biofacts about the diverse life forms found on our beaches; meet some of our undergraduate Summer Scholars and hear about their projects; find out how invasive species impact our aquatic ecosystems; and learn more about Oregon Sea Grant’s integrated research, education, and public engagement on ocean and coastal issues. There is something for everyone at this family-friendly event!

Summer issue of Confluence magazine now online

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The summer 2013 issue of Oregon Sea Grant’s magazine, Confluence, is now online at http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/confluenceconfluence-2-1-cover

Articles in this issue, which focuses on aquaculture in Oregon, include “The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Acid Tests,” “Priced out of our own seafood,” and “The traveling ornamental defender.”

Project C.R.A.B.: Fishermen, scientists, work together for sustainable fishery

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Noelle Yochum confers with crabbersNOAA Fisheries highlights graduate researcher Noelle Yochum and her work with Oregon’s Dungeness crab fleet on bycatch reduction and crab mortality:

For popular seafood menu items like Dungeness crab, there’s good reason to make sure that there is a healthy supply to meet demand. That’s just what the Oregon C.R.A.B. Project is meant to do. This budding research partnership is looking for ways to improve the long-term sustainability of the state’s crab fishery while building relationships with the fishing industry and local community.

C.R.A.B., which stands for Collaborative Research to Assess Bycatch, is funded by NOAA Fisheries’ Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program and the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. Researcher Noelle Yochum from Oregon State University is collaborating with local commercial and recreational fishermen to tag female and small male crabs that are caught and thrown back because, by Oregon law, they cannot be sold. Through this research, Noelle hopes to capture estimates of survival rates for these crabs along with an understanding of potential ways to increase survival.

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Noelle’s collaboration with Newport crab fishermen  was the subject of our cover story in last summer’s edition of Confluence magazine. The crab bycatch collaboration is one of many outcomes of a long-term Oregon Sea Grant effort, led by coastal Extension Sea Grant specialists,  to bring the fishing fleet and scientists together for mutual understanding and benefit.