Ever wonder how to feed an octopus? Well, now you can find out–by watching How to Feed a Giant Pacific Octopus, a video produced by Oregon Sea Grant for NOAA’s Ocean Today kiosk.
The three-minute video features a very hungry Reuben the Octopus, along with Bill Hanshumaker, Oregon Sea Grant’s marine public education specialist at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon.
The summer 2013 issue of Oregon Sea Grant’s magazine, Confluence, is now online at http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/confluence
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.”
LINCOLN City – More than 100 junior high, high school and college students will converge on the Lincoln Community Center this Saturday (May 4) to compete in the Oregon Regional Marine Advanced Technology ROV Competition – and a chance to advance to the international finals.
Teams from Albany, Astoria, Corbett, Corvallis, The Dalles, Eddyville, Lincoln City, Salem, Toledo, Portland and Waldport are expected for the competition which runs from 8:30 am to 4:30 p.m. at the community center, 2150 NE Oar Place. The event is open to the public.
Competing teams, ranging from 6th grade to college age, have designed and built tethered underwater robots known as remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. The annual competition is sponsored by Oregon Sea Grant, the OregonCoast STEM Center, and the Oregon Chapter of the Marine Technology Society, and is intended to encourage Oregon students to learn and apply science, technology, engineering and math skills.
Full-scale ROVs are widely used in scientific research, ocean exploration, homeland security, the offshore oil and gas industry, and other industries. This year’s contest highlights the role ROVs play in the installation, operation, and maintenance of ocean observing systems, collections of high-tech instruments above and below the waves that provide around-the-clock information about what is happening in the ocean. Via fiber optic cable, the data collection equipment continuously communicates information to scientists, engineers and technicians who use it to understand and make predictions about the ocean, coast, and ocean resources. Ocean Observing Systems provide critical information on climate change, toxic algal blooms, tsunamis and other ocean hazards.
Competing teams must pilot their ROVs to perform a variety of underwater mission tasks, from installing a simulated power and communications “hub” and scientific instruments in order to complete a seafloor ocean observatory to removing bio-fouling organisms from instruments and performing maintenance on moorings.
The winning team will advance to the 12th annual MATE International ROV Competition, June 20-22 in Federal Way, Wash.
The regional MATE program, one of 22 such competitions around the world, is supported by local sponsors including the Marine Technology Society, the Oregon Coast Regional STEM Center, OSU’s Pre-College Programs, Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators, the Siletz Tribe Charitable Funds, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Pro-Build, Advanced Research Corporation, and the NOAA Officers Family Association. Local marine technology professionals volunteer as judges for the competition, evaluating the students’ ROVs, poster displays, and engineering presentations.
NEWPORT – Dan Bottom, fisheries biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, steps up to the bar to talk about salmon at the next Science on Tap event on March 13 at Brewer’s on the Bay.
“Celebrating Diversity: Sustaining Pacific Salmon in a Changing World” is Bottom’s theme for the evening, which takes place in the downstairs Board room at Rogue Ale’s South Beach waterfront location. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the talk begins at 6; the event is free and open to the public. Appetizers will be served, and additional food and drinks available for purchase from the menu.
Bottom, editor and contributing author for Oregon Sea Grant’s 2011 book Pathways to Resilience: Sustaining Pacific Salmon in a Changing World, will discuss the importance of salmon diversity and the attributes of resilience. His talk will draw from the book’s 11 peer-reviewed articles, including case studies of salmon and salmon fisheries, and will explore management actions that draw on salmon life history and genetic diversity to maintain salmon populations into the future.
Bottom notes, “Salmon exhibit a wide variety of life history traits. These include salmon runs and populations that exhibit differences in migration timing, duration of estuary rearing and size when the salmon enter the ocean.” Healthy, diverse watersheds, says Bottom, provide habitat connections that not only sustain diverse salmon life histories but also provide diverse social and economic opportunities for people.
The 392-page, full-color book, with a prologue by Governor John Kitzhaber, will be available at the event for purchase and author signing. It can also be purchased online from Oregon Sea Grant.
Science on Tap is a regular program of OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, co-sponsored by Oregon Sea Grant, NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, MidCoast Watersheds Council, Native Fish Society, and The Wetlands Conservancy. For more information about the event, call 541-867-0234.
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:
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.
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
Learn more:
WASHINGTON, D.C. Day three of the ten-day Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall was cancelled after OSU’s tent and at least nine others were damaged by a massive thunderstorm that swept across the capital on Friday night.
On Saturday morning the 16-foot long plexiglass wave tank, borrowed by OSU from Howard University to demonstrate tsunamis, stood on two tables peeking out from under a frayed blue tarp amid a field of debris. Around it laid bent pieces of metal tent tubing, soggy “Powered by Orange” tee shirts, and muddied posters that describe OSU extension and outreach activities.
OSU's demonstration area after a severe thunderstorm came through Friday night.
“I was shocked when the festival representative called this morning and said, ‘well, the wave tank is fine but you’ll need you to stay away for the day while we find you a new tent’,” said OSU Director of University Events Shelly Signs. Signs heads up the team of paid staff and volunteers that has traveled from Oregon to demonstrate OSU research and extension activities. These include tsunami education activities, Sea Grant-related surimi and fisheries research, and projects by the 4-H Tech Wizards—an OSU Extension program that provides after-school tech-related activities for underrepresented youth.
The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival was created in 1967 to examine and showcase different aspects of American and global culture. To mark the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s signing of the Morrill Bill that called for the creation of land-grant universities, Smithsonian invited land-grant universities from around the country to set up exhibits that showcase activities connected with their mission. The program, called “Campus and Community“, features exhibits and activities from 28 U.S. land-grant institutions.
By Sunday, OSU’s tent had been replaced and Signs and her team were busy making tsunamis, rolling out surimi and firing off air-propelled rockets. At tables in front of the wave tank, children and parents snapped together Legos trying to create structures that could withstand the six-inch wave the machine generates. OSU researcher Jae Park and his wife stood by a glass-topped freezer that displayed numerous brands of surimi and spoke to festival goers about how the product utilizes parts of fish that were once discarded (Park’s research and his Astoria-based Surimi School got early support from Oregon Sea Grant). On nearby tables children used surimi molds and rolling pins to make artificial crab and pressed shrimp shapes out of clay.
Smithsonian volunteer and young festival attendees watch to see which structures will withstand the tsunami.
In Reunion Hall, just across from the OSU tent, 4-H Tech Wizards program manager Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas showed one young festival goer how to connect a motor to a solar cell. Behind him teacher Miguel Angel Cholu Hernandez tested the latest batch of air-propelled rockets that had been made at their table.
Despite losing a day, Signs seems happy with the way things are turning out. “People are learning about how to build structures that are less susceptible to tsunamis, they’re learning sustainable food practices and are seeing the great things that the Tech-Wizards are doing,” she said. “Plus we’ve had an opportunity to build community with all of the other land-grant communities that are also participating. I’d say this is a success.”
To see more photos of the event please visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_register/sets/72157630388536296/
(Rhett Register is a former Corvallis reporter and freelancer now living and working in Washington, D.C., where he is a researcher for National Geographic Travel magazine.)
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.
NEWPORT – Dr. Shawn Rowe, Oregon Sea Grant’s marine education learning specialist, is the scientist on tap at Rogue Ales’ Brewer’s on the Bay this Friday evening, talking about how people learn science outside the conventional classroom.
The event, part of the Science on Tap series sponsored by the brewpub and OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, is free and family-friendly. Doors open at 5:30 pm; food and beverages are available for purchase.
Rowe heads the Free-Choice Learning Lab at the HMSC Visitor Center, where he is working under a $2.6 million National Science Foundation grant to create a state-of-the-art laboratory to study how people learn about science in aquariums, museums and other venues. The grant is the largest single research award to Oregon Sea Grant in its 40-year history and among the largest ever made to a Sea Grant program nationwide.
Dr. Shawn Rowe’s team is exploring the use of networked computers, face-recognition , real-time evaluation tools and other emerging technologies to get a deeper understanding of what and how visitors learn in places like the HMSC.
Speaking with Rowe will be Nancy Steinberg, a biologist and longtime public outreach specialist who is currently involved in the Yaquina Bay Ocean Observing Initiative, an effort to make Newport a hub for ocean observing science in the Pacific Northwest.
NEWPORT – OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center will open its doors a bit wider on Saturday, April 14, when the Newport facility hosts its first Marine Science Day.
The free public event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., will feature scientists and educators from OSU, federal and state agencies, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and the new NOAA Marine Operations Center-Pacific. It offers a rare opportunity for the public to go behind the scenes of one of the nation’s leading marine science and education facilities.
Oregon Sea Grant and its marine education program will offer special activities at the HMSC Visitor Center, and behind-the-scenes tours of its ornamental fish laboratory.
Oregon First Lady Cylvia Hayes will speak briefly at 3 p.m. in the Visitor Center auditorium, along with OSU Vice President for Research Richard Spinrad. Bruce Mate, director of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, will follow with a presentation showcasing the center’s pioneering role in tracking whales by satellite.
“Marine Science Day will be fun and engaging for people of all ages,” said Maryann Bozza, HMSC program manager. “Visitors will wind through the campus, getting a true behind-the-scenes experience with an unparalleled opportunity to learn directly from marine scientists.”
Most Marine Science Day exhibits and activities will be indoors, but some tours will take visitors outside to walk from one lab to another, and some exhibits will be outdoors.
“The diverse science conducted at the facility reaches from local coastlines and estuaries to the depths of the world’s oceans,” she added, “and in scale from microbes on the seafloor to undersea volcanoes and the whales that swim over them.”
Visitors can meet Pearl, the Visitor Center’s newest octopus and watch her being fed at 1 pm; observe a sea turtle necropsy; and meet fisheries scientists and geologists whose research is described in center exhibits. The public also can participate in self-guided tours through the facility’s marine research labs, library and classrooms, where scientists will have interactive exhibits explaining their research. Highlights include:
Visitors may also take guided tours of HMSC’s seawater facilities and ornamental fish laboratory. More information, including program and special events, is available at on the HMSC Website.
The event is intended to showcase OSU’s unique partnership with state and federal agencies, which makes the HMSC a national leader in marine research and education, according to director George Boehlert.
“OSU’s Newport campus is known for a diversity of research and the expertise of its scientists, which offer unique opportunities in education and outreach,” Boehlert said. “Visitors to Marine Science Day will get a sense of the innovation and synergy that makes the Hatfield Marine Science Center unique.”
Collaborative research partners that share the campus with OSU labs include six federal and state agencies: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries and NOAA Research, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and U.S. Department of Agriculture.