Monthly Archives: July 2017

Barbecues, Burgers, and Beach Volleyball

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There seem to be two key factors that go into the field of conservation. First is finding/studying what it is you believe needs to be conserved. Second is convincing everyone else why the heck it’s such a big deal. I’ve always envisioned myself working primarily on the first side. I’m more scientific than social, a nerd, if you must. Yet this week I spent almost the entirety of my time working on the second side of conservation. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Reserves Program hosted several community outreach events across the coast, and my fellow interns and I were lucky enough to tag along for all of them! Remember that painfully clichéd “in the world of marine biology you either sink or swim” pun I made at the end of my last blog post? I hate to bring it up again, but it became even more appropriate during these outreach events.

First of all, as I mentioned earlier, this was basically my first experience on the outreach side of conservation. To add to that, at the time of the start of the first event, I had been in Oregon for exactly one week. Yet there I was preparing to act as a representative of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. I think I was justified in feeling a little bit intimidated. Our first event was a community barbecue in the town of Port Orford, which sits on the shore of Oregon’s first marine reserve (Redfish Rocks, look it up, it’s beautiful). Port Orford is a tiny fishing town with a lot of people who know way more about Oregon’s fish than I do, so I knew I had to be careful or I could talk myself into uncharted waters very quickly. But it’s not too difficult to talk to people about something when it’s something that you A) are knowledgeable of and B) really care about. Luckily, I know a few things about fish and marine conservation, and I care a lot about both.

Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve

The only stumbling block I encountered was my shoddy grasp on Oregon geography. I met people from Netarts, Yachats, Gold Beach, Brookings, etc. and I did a lot of smiling and nodding along, pretending like I knew where any of those places were. With the help of Google Maps, I eventually looked up all the towns I heard, and I was amazed at how far some people had come! The people of the Oregon coast (or at least those I have met so far) are impressive in their appreciation for our natural resources. Our main purpose for outreach was just to inform the public about who we are and what we’re doing in their oceans. Some who came were more interested in the free food than the free science, but it was remarkable how many were genuinely interested in the marine reserves and our monitoring methods. In Port Orford, our event attracted about 40 community members (quite impressive when you consider the town’s population is barely 1,000). That same evening we hosted a “Science at the Pub” event at a restaurant in Port Orford where we played Marine Reserves Bingo. Again we were able to get our message out to a lot of people. Port Orford was a huge success.

My fellow interns and I spent the next day hiking and snorkeling all in the name of collecting footage for the marine reserves image database (what a great job).

Hiking Humbug Mountain in the name of work

Then we were on the road again, this time up north to Garibaldi on the Tillamook Bay. Cape Falcon Marine Reserve, 10 miles north of Garibaldi was the most recent addition to Oregon’s protected waters, and we expected a different reception there than the one we received in Port Orford. The process of establishing Cape Falcon Marine Reserve was met with much greater resistance than Redfish Rocks. You wouldn’t have believed that though if you attended our barbecue in Garibaldi. We hosted over 100 people (in a town under 1000!) and had to run to the store to avoid running out of burgers. Not only were the numbers impressive, but the people of Garibaldi were eager to talk. I must’ve talked to two dozen different people about the marine reserves and explained what a SMURF is at least 10 times. There was even an incredibly friendly couple who expressed interest in the Sea Grant program and asked me for the address to this blog, which I was more than happy to provide (If that couple is reading this now, hello! Thanks for stopping by!). I shared info about the marine reserves and in return I learned so much about the history of Garibaldi, Tillamook Bay, and the state of Oregon. It was truly a fantastic experience. My hope is that our outreach events got at least a handful of citizens earnestly thinking about the future of Oregon’s coast, how they want that future to look, and how they might contribute to working towards it. That’s all I can ask.

Garibaldi barbecue after the rush had died down

This man knew everything there was to know about the history of Garibaldi. I was happy to listen.

After the outreach events I had a significant amount of downtime which I filled with hiking, biking, reading, running, and learning the real rules of beach volleyball. Concerning volleyball, one of the REUs living here actually told me “for someone so talented, you really don’t know anything”. I chose to take it as a compliment. Two weeks in, my experience in Oregon just keeps getting better. It won’t all be beach volleyball and barbecues I’m sure, but I’ll live with it.

Happy Hikers at Cape Perpetua

Week 2: Good, Good, Good, ~Expectations~

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Beach boys and girls

Week 2: Good, Good, Good, ~Expectations~
…As the Beach Boys classic goes (or something like that).

This past week was my first full week on the job; I already feel like I’m getting the hang of our early morning routine on field days, and that I’m a contributing member of the team. I’ve dug up my fair share of clams, even correctly identifying (some of) them. I got to use the handheld GPS to navigate us from waypoint to waypoint, which requires a very good handle on cardinal direction, and which I have yet to master. This week was also fun because our team consisted of three women (a fact that did not go unnoticed by a fisherman on the dock, who laughed at what he affectionately called our “sexy Gumby suits”). We ladies worked two 11-hour days in a row, allowing us to finish early on Wednesday. We celebrated later that night by going out for dinner and drinks at the local 7 Devils Brewery, where my co-worker graciously picked up my tab. I sipped on a delicious in-house hard cider and enjoyed the company of my ODFW team, live music, and the collection of canines brought along by our fellow patrons (a dog-friendly brewery, does it get any better?!).

Expectations Meeting-

As this post’s title would suggest, this week we held our Expectations meeting between my mentors, myself, and the program coordinators at Oregon Sea Grant. I really appreciated the program’s effort to work together with the scholars and our mentors to establish a game plan for the next 8 weeks, making sure our work is oriented towards reaching our goals. I have been enjoying my time in the field and lab, but a main part of what I wanted to get out of working for ODFW this summer was learning how a state agency operates, at all levels. I wanted to take part in public outreach and learn about the regulation/monitoring/policy aspects in addition to the science we’d be conducting. I brought this up during our conference call and I really felt my voice was heard. In the days following both Tony and Scott Groth, shellfish biologist and project leader for the Oregon pink shrimp fishery (and my co-mentor), presented me with opportunities to take part in outreach, including manning the ODFW touch tank at the state fair and conducting creel surveys of clammers off several docks in the region. This was in addition to the helpful document they had previously made listing my responsibilities and activities for the remainder of the summer. Their flexibility and willingness to prioritize my learning objectives is a clear reflection of why they were chosen as Summer Scholar mentors.

Could Use a Hand (or 2)-

I don’t know if I’d call myself accident prone, per say, but I think it can be fully established that I do not have the best luck. My track record this year includes my identity getting stolen, my new laptop’s battery dying- and learning that the manufacturer had recently stopped producing said batteries, unknowingly driving around with a gas leak for a couple months, and more than a handful of visits to urgent care. And that is where I found myself once again on Thursday evening, complaining of an irritating rash on the back of my hands that had popped up earlier in the week but was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. After consulting with my supervisors, we thought it best to go get it checked out. And, because of all the work I’d been doing in the water/mud and with animals, they informed me that this was likely a worker’s compensation issue and that it would be best to file a claim. So started my first (and hopefully last) encounter with worker’s comp paperwork, which seems to be quite the process. The urgent care facility was very nice, and newly renovated. I was seen by an older gentleman, and after a brief look at my hands we began a long brainstorming session to find out what could possibly be causing the bizarre red, bumpy rash isolated entirely to the back of my hands. My answers to his questions did not reveal a definite cause, nor did his answers to mine. His final advice was to act as a “Sherlock detective” and keep an eye out for things that could only be coming into contact with that part of my hands. He prescribed me a mild steroid cream to be applied twice a day and sent me on my way. It is now Sunday and they don’t seem to be improving much. :/

Mystery Rash

Bandon Pacific Seafood-

One cool thing I got to do this week was tour the unloading area of the Bandon Pacific Seafood wholesale plant, across the street from the Charleston ODFW office. These seamen hard at work pulling fish from their piles and operating heavy machinery were a greasy lot, but many of them greeted us or at least did not seem disturbed by our presence. We met up with Dean, a 20-yr employee of the Charleston ODFW office, who was dressed in foul-weather gear, wielding a large knife and standing over an icy bin of black cod (which is actually not a cod, but a sablefish). He was making precise cuts into both the belly and head of the fish, to identify the sex and remove the otoliths, respectively. Otoliths, literally meaning “earstones”, are the ear bones of a fish and are used to age the fish and determine growth rate. He was also taking length and weight measurements of the fish. He is clearly an expert at what he does, and was eager to explain each step to me. He even cut a weird sac-like parasite out a fish and popped it so I could see the black, congealed blood inside. It was gnarly (a seagull was later seen eating it- again, gnarly). The smell of rotting fish and being surrounded by death did not make the dock my favorite place, but I did learn a lot. One of the things I was most happy to hear was that they do their best to find an economic use each part of the fish/shellfish they catch. For example, shrimp are boiled and peeled before being packaged. The peeled exoskeletons are then saved and sold as fertilizer!

Otolith King

This week had its up and downs but I am very much loving Oregon and looking forward to the weeks to come. Hope everyone has an enjoyable, safe Fourth of July!

Best,

Katie Gregory

Week 2: Mud and Eelgrass

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This week, green crab monitoring was in full swing. We sampled across five different sites throughout the South Slough, setting 12 crab traps at each site. Everything went pretty smoothly—except for getting stuck to the mud up to our thighs at one point. We had been warned about the mud here, but we were not quite ready for what that could actually entail. As I walked toward the small stream of water still remaining at low tide, my boots started sinking more and more into the mud until I was up to my thigh. Another intern came over to help, and then she got stuck too. We were eventually able to get our feet out of our boots and army-crawl out, and then had to dig our boots out as well. My entire lower body and arms were covered in thick, sulfurous mud. I wish I had pictures, but we were too covered in mud to touch our phones. It was all worth it, though; so far, we’ve caught green crabs at every site, for a total of about 40 crabs across all sites. In the other side of Coos Bay, they have been even more abundant this year. Another researcher caught over 100 green crabs within one day. As we continue to re-sample sites throughout the next few weeks, we will be able to more accurately compare their abundance to previous years and provide a more complete assessment of the population trend.

Because green crabs will be a majority of my time here and I will be writing about them frequently, I thought I would take a digression and also write about an eelgrass research project that I assisted on this week. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a seagrass that can form dense beds along bays and estuaries. These beds provide important habitat and nurseries for many shellfish and fish and provide feeding ground for birds and other wildlife. Eelgrass has been declining throughout the United States, with various natural and anthropogenic causes: nutrient runoff, invasive competitors, shellfish harvesting practices, rising temperatures and sea levels, and eelgrass wasting disease.

Researchers from Oregon State University are conducting a multi-year study on eelgrass decline along the Oregon coast, including sites in Coos Bay. We took a boat out to two sites with dense eelgrass beds. We then navigated to approximately 40 randomly selected GPS coordinates throughout the site. At each GPS point, we counted the number of eelgrass shoots within a .25x.25 m square (called a quadrat) and collected a single eelgrass shoot and all of the algae present within the quadrat. These samples of eelgrass and algae will be processed later for various measurements, including quantifying the biomass and the number of epizoa (animals living on the surface of the eelgrass). Even just spending a few hours in the eelgrass beds offers a glimpse of how much life they can support. We saw baby starfish smaller than a pinky nail clinging to eelgrass, countless shellfish and crabs, and birds such as gulls, cormorants, and even a few Great Blue Heron out on the eelgrass beds at low tide, searching for food. It was a beautiful place to spend some time doing research.

 

The eelgrass bed site (called Clam Island) that we sampled at low tide. At low tide, the eelgrass is matted down as the water recedes. But as the tide rises, the water will allow the eelgrass to lift up, and it will more resemble a forest of grass.

Another intern and I counting eelgrass shoots at one GPS coordinate at Clam Island. The white square is called a quadrat: at each GPS coordinate, the number of eelgrass shoots within the quadrat were counted and algae and eelgrass from within the quadrat were collected.

Me standing at the edge of Clam Island where the water is starting to come back in as the tide rises. (My eyes are open this time!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information about eelgrass:

http://www.habitat.noaa.gov/abouthabitat/eelgrass.html