Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Joshua Fackrell

It has been a great few weeks interning with the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network (OCOIN). OCOIN is run by volunteers, so I have had the opportunity to meet professionals from many organizations throughout Oregon. My first week was spent meeting the members of the Steering Committee to learn a little about them and their role within OCOIN. I have since begun to dig into some of the projects that I am working on this summer. The project that I am most excited about today is helping write OCOIN’s newsletter. I get to interview a researcher that I have wanted to meet, and we get to talk about their research.

OCOIN, being run by volunteers, was primarily operated remotely before the pandemic. While it would be nice to meet people in person, I feel as though I flourish in the flexibility of this environment. Another Summer Scholar, Charlotte, and I Zoom with while working to make our workday seem a little more personal. It is sort of like sharing an office with someone; I feel lucky to have such a wonderful “office-mate”. We also get to have weekly meetings with each committee within the organization, whether it be the whole committee or just a one-on-one meeting. My workstation can take place in a variety of locations. Typically, I am in the comfort of my home. However, this coming Monday, I will be wrapping up an inspirational trip to the coast. With the flexibility of my work location, I will be able to work with a view of the ocean, which is central to the work that I am doing.

I have been encouraged to provide an outside perspective to help shape OCOIN. It feels inspiring to share ideas that I have to make a difference within the organization. I have been offered many professional development opportunities: sitting in on meetings, informational interviews with organizations I see myself working for in the future, and training to help develop the technical skills that I am looking for. Not even halfway through my internship, many of my goals already seem to be taking shape. I am so grateful for the opportunities provided thus far as a Summer Scholar.

Getting in the Groove

Posted on July 8, 2021 by sea_fren

Hello All!

In the last couple of weeks, we have really started to get into the groove of surveying visitors to Oregon’s marine reserves. We are nearly done with surveying businesses in nearby towns and will start focusing more time on data entry and analysis. Our day to day schedule varies quite a bit. We usually start with a bit of driving followed by four hours of surveying visitors at different access points to Oregon’s marine reserves. We work in pairs, so whoever is not doing visitor surveys is either surveying businesses or in the office inputting the survey data into an excel spreadsheet.

The one exception from this routine was our trip to Cape Falcon near Tillamook. That particular location is too far to travel to in one day, so Phoenix and I drove up and stayed two nights in Garibaldi. Our one survey location was Oswald West State Park, one of the most popular parks on the Oregon Coast. We were able to complete almost as many surveys in three days as the previous week and a half combined!

We interact with the public quite a bit. Most people are very friendly and happy to take the survey, especially if we mention that we are interns. People really love the coast and beautiful scenery and many are passionate about preserving it. We have gotten a little off track at times chit-chatting with visitors about marine reserves and the goals of the survey.

COVID-19 hasn’t impacted us too much especially in the last couple weeks. We spend most of our time outdoors and since we are on the coast it is usually windy. Many businesses have dropped mask requirements for fully vaccinated people and so we have been able to about surveying like its 2019 for the most part.

We didn’t get much of a chance to explore while we were at Cape Falcon but hope to on our next trip in a couple weeks. Lisette and I did make it to Drift Creek Falls near Lincoln City on one of our days off, we even made it down to where the waterfall goes into the creek. We brought my dog Thistle along and found out that waterfalls are not her favorite and neither are suspension bridges.

It has been a great few weeks and I am looking forward to the rest of the Summer!

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Lisette and I on the suspension bridge at Drift Creek Falls.

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Thistle before the suspension bridge and waterfall fall.

The start of summer fieldwork

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Haley

Summer is officially here, and it brought with it a scorching heat wave that has invoked record high temperatures throughout Oregon. Portland reached 116 degrees F this week, which is hotter than Dallas, New Orleans, or downtown Los Angeles have ever been according to NBC News. The Oregon coast, however, has not been experiencing this heat wave. The high each day in Newport has been a typical 63 degrees F, about 50 degrees cooler than the valley. These cooler coastal temperatures are perfect for field work, which is exactly what our summer interns are doing right now.

Earlier this month I spent a week in Newport getting to know our three summer interns. Two of them are Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholars while one is a Doris Duke Conservation Scholar who has also been adopted by the Summer Scholars Program. You can read more about their personal experiences with fieldwork and living in Newport elsewhere in this blog forum.

It was wonderful to be working in person again rather than through choppy Zoom/Skype calls. The days flew by as we hastily prepared for summer field sampling including disseminating background information, creating codebooks, designing the sample plan, visiting sample sites, etc. It is such a privilege to work with college interns because they have a contagious enthusiasm and eagerness to learn and do the work.

It was also important to me to reconnect with the marine reserves which I am researching. Driving around to the different sampling sites with the interns allowed me to visit Cascade Head Marine Reserve, Otter Rock Marine Reserve, and Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve. The bright blue sky reflected off the ocean making it appear more blue than I remember it being. The birds were chirping, sea lions were barking, people were out surfing and walking their dogs on the beach. Sitting behind a computer looking at data all day can make you forget the bigger picture, but visiting the coast was the perfect way to remember.

Of course, I still found time to recreate in the evening, though the wind did nearly blow me away a couple times. I was lucky enough to be staying at a house just a couple blocks from the beach. The dog and I made it down to the beach every day, sometimes even twice.

Summer Scholar with OCOIN

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Joshua Fackrell

This summer, I am interning with the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network (OCOIN). OCION is a network that helps facilitate relationships between researchers, policymakers, and managers. I am proud to be a part of an organization that promotes the use of science in decision-making.

Joshua Fackrell : Remote working station

This summer with OCOIN, I will primarily focus on their outreach team, where I will be working to encourage participation with the network. To accomplish this, I will be helping to update OCOIN’s tools, the Coastal Research Explorer and the Oregon Explorer. In addition, I will be preparing newsletters and helping plan OCOIN’s Fall 2021 annual meeting. I will be working with another Sea Grant intern, Charlotte, who will be primarily working on the technical side of OCOIN. It has been great starting to collaborate with her and learning from one another. The OCOIN steering committee is made up of volunteers who work for various organizations throughout the state. So far, this has provided a fantastic opportunity to network with people and is providing so many new things to learn.

My work with OCOIN is perfectly situated with Sea Grant. By increasing collaboration between science and policy, coastal communities and ecosystems can receive the care they need. At the core of OCOIN is collaboration; I feel honored to be a part of their outreach team, helping to expand the users that participate with the network.

Starting the summer at OCOIN!

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Charlotte Klein

My transition from a year of online coursework at the University of Oregon to being a Summer Scholar with the Oregon Sea Grant has been seamless, as the process happened in my own room! This summer I am working as a remote intern with the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network (OCOIN) as a member of the Technical Committee.

My workstation for the summer. On the larger screen is OCOIN’s Coastal Research Explorer tool, while the smaller screen displays OCOIN’s network directory.

OCOIN as an organization is a professional network that aims to connect and facilitate collaboration between scientists, policy makers, and managers who are all involved in coastal and ocean affairs. This goal is accomplished through two tools, the Coastal Research Explorer and the Oregon Coastal & Marine Data Network Directory, as well as outreach efforts such as an annual webinar. The Coastal Research Explorer is a digital platform that allows the sharing of past, present, and future research taking place on the Oregon coast. Researchers and policy makers alike can use the maps and tables within this tool to view and explore research projects across multiple topics. Alternatively, the Network Directory facilitates contact sharing amongst the large OCOIN network.

The three main facets of the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network.

As a member of OCOIN’s Technical Committee, I will be doing a lot of data management this summer: from updating research information in the Coastal Research Explorer and optimizing user capabilities, to updating the Network Directory. Over the first two weeks I met OCOIN’s many steering committee members, began the data updating process, and completed ArcGIS Online classes to prepare for working with the Coastal Research Explorer tool.

I am also excited to do outreach work with Joshua, my fellow Sea Grant Scholar working at OCOIN this summer. Together we will write two newsletters for OCOIN members and assist in the planning of the annual OCOIN webinar. Outreach is essential for sharing new and ongoing coastal research and maintaining the vast OCOIN network.

The key intersection between the work I will be doing at OCOIN this summer and the Oregon Sea Grant’s mission is the promotion of discovery and understanding for Oregon coastal communities and ecosystems. The sharing of novel research and coordination between researchers is essential for creating new research projects and understanding research that is ongoing or already completed across Oregon.

100% shore it’ll be an exciting summer!

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Andrea

Coming into the second week of this internship has made me reflect on the previous week’s work. Although it has only been a week and a few days, it feels as if I’ve been here for months; in the best way of course. This summer I am working with the Haystack Rock Awareness program and I am working on a human dimensions study to further understand the knowledge gap between research communities and the public at large. This project could facilitate a productive two-way dialogue that could help bridge the gap between science and speculation. In order to do this, I will be curating a series of surveys that target research professionals, the general public, and the staff at HRAP. Using my findings I will propose a plan that maximizes engagement and marine conservation prospects among the general public here at Cannon Beach. In addition to the surveys, I will be making the research from the community science projects, that HRAP is involved in, more accessible through a series of informational pieces.

My first week consisted of reading many research papers and beach days. While the bulk of my work has to be done in the office, there are a few days within the week that call for me to help HRAP with their interpreter beach program. This allows me to talk to people and collect points of focus for my research. On these days I can engage with the public and educate them on tide pool etiquette, marine life, and conservation. One of my favorite memories so far is from my talk with a little boy and his mom. They had been coming to the beach every day and had been interacting with the interpreters from HRAP every day. The little boy was so knowledgeable by day three and carried an incredible amount of curiosity and excitement despite being there many days prior. This interaction made me become more aware of the way that my summer program project could help with engagement and how everyone deserves to be curious and excited about marine life.

My project has a strong alignment with both Oregon Seagrant’s and Haystack Rock Awareness’s mission statement. Through my work, I hope to promote discovery via education and see this research increase marine and coastal curiosities that lead to overall ecosystem health.

Summer Kickoff at Haystack Rock!

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Amishi

It is officially almost the end of my second week with Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP) and I am starting to get a very good idea of their mission and how my project fits into that mission as well as Sea Grant’s vision. My primary project is creating a virtual education center. The education center will incorporate new research surrounding virtual field trips, 21st century curriculum, and NGSS science standards for a variety of age groups. This education center will help reach students all over the country that might not have access to field trips to intertidal zones. This project will accomplish a variety of goals, the main one being to modernize the current virtual field trip option, as well as just being able to reach a bigger group of people.

Another part of my work here is to assist with their summer camps, in-person field trips, and occasionally working as an interpreter on the beach. Last week I got to go on a two part field trip to the Ecola Creek Forest Reserve and Haystack Rock with a group of kids. Both of those trips gave me a close up look at what HRAP’s education looks like up close. Seeing the current educational programs gives me a much better idea of what the virtual program should look like as well as build my knowledge of conservation and native species in the area! Last week I saw clusters of squid eggs, a feeding starfish and tons of other cool things.

A cluster of squid eggs that were found washed up into a tide pool at Haystack Rock

My primary project is directly tied to HRAP’s mission, “to protect, through education, the intertidal and bird ecology of the Marine Garden and Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge at Haystack Rock.” By creating educational programs that are more accessible to a wider range of people, more people are inclined to be interested in marine conservation and be stewards to their environment. Additionally, by incorporating the ideas and theories of 21st century learning I am able to create a virtual program that is more engaging than the traditional video lecture approach. By creating a more engaging program that appeals to kids hopefully they will want to be more involved with conservation, and grow up to be more ecologically responsible.

This also aids in Sea Grant’s mission to have thriving coastal communities, by serving as a catalyst that promotes discovery, understanding and resilience for Oregon coastal communities and ecosystems. My project aids in this goal by acting as an educational catalyst that promotes both discovery and understanding of a coastal ecosystem.

Midwest-Mid=West

Posted on June 24, 2021 by sea_pere

Hello everyone,

My name is Lisette Perez and a super-senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia studying Natural Resources. Thanks to the Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholars program, I will be working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Through their Marine Reserves Division, I will help analyze the socioeconomic impacts marine reserves have on businesses. Additionally, I will be surveying locals and non-locals to obtain their perceptions on the marine reserves. This internship has allowed me to learn about marine reserves, obtain the technical and analytical skills that I can use for future jobs. With the work done by the scholars, we will be able to expand this project’s database and survey population. Additionally, this project can promote education, outreach, and awareness on the marine reserves. This project is allowing is preparing us socially, academically, and professionally. It is providing us not only the opportunity to expand our professional sphere, but to gain the critical thinking, technical, and hands-on skills.

I am very excited and honored to be a part of the prestigious program. Through this program I have been able to gain new friends, professional development opportunities, and the chance to be in a different state and region for the summer. I am originally from Chicago and being in Oregon is like being in a whole new world. This place is beautiful. I look forward to the rest of the summer and can’t wait to see what else is in store. 

Summer Roles and Summer Goals at the South Slough: The Sequel!

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Lucas Parvin

I had a blast as an Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar last summer and was sad to see my time as an OSG intern end… If only I had known that I would get the opportunity again, I could have saved all my feelings of disappointment from last summer and waited to feel emotion until the end of this summer!

Collecting and recording data on invasive European green crabs last summer (2020) in Charleston, OR

Just a couple of weeks ago, I found out that extenuating circumstances left the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve (SSNERR) without an OSG intern for the summer and was offered the opportunity to repeat as an OSG intern this summer. Though I currently live in Corvallis and am conducting research here, I could not turn down the opportunity! I planned on driving down to Charleston a few times this summer to volunteer at the South Slough anyway, but now my role has been expanded.

As a Summer Scholar this summer, like last summer, one of my primary work duties will be to help organize, prepare for, and lead in-person summer science camps at the reserve. In addition to helping with the science camps, my big project this summer will be assisting in the creation of a new exhibit at the South Slough Interpretive Center, which will help to educate visitors about water quality throughout the slough and associated watersheds. This exhibit will allow visitors to have a greater appreciation and understanding for the important role that water quality has on the entire local ecosystem. Other tasks I will be taking on include assisting the science team in conducting fieldwork when they need extra hands, creating additional educational materials (like guides similar to the plant guide I created last summer or species-specific conservation posters), and assisting in the delivery of educational workshops or tours for the general public.

Ultimately, by assisting in the duties discussed above, I will be helping the education team at the South Slough to achieve its goal to improve public understanding of how estuarine systems work and why they are so important. I will also help advance SSNERR’s mission, which is to serve as a model for how to properly manage coastal communities on regional, national, and global levels. Management of national estuarine research reserves (NERRs) involves public outreach and education workshops, so through these avenues, I will be serving South Slough’s mission. As I discussed last summer too, these project goals will help advance Oregon Sea Grant’s mission for coastal communities to flourish. By educating citizens of coastal communities about how to best utilize and care for their natural environments, the number of people who value health of Oregon’s coastal ecosystems should see growth (even if that means one person at a time). Moreover, increasing the excitement and knowledge base in regards to coastal ecosystems amongst youth will hopefully encourage some members of our future generations to pursue careers in biology, ecology, conservation, and wilderness management.

Though, I’m still in Corvallis and will be doing much of my OSG work virtually this summer, I am excited to be on the coast again soon working at the South Slough and enjoying wildlife – like the great blue heron seen above… (also the mascot for SSNERR!)

I am looking forward to working with Oregon Sea Grant and the South Slough Reserve again this summer. Thanks!

Start of the Summer with Eat Oregon Seafood

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Mikay Reuter

I am just one week into my Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar position and I am already starting to get a clearer idea about my role as a Summer Scholar! One thing I have started to figure out is how my work fits into the broader picture of Sea Grant. This summer I am working for Eat Oregon Seafood (EOS) which is an initiative created by Oregon Sea Grant. EOS was created after a survey asked individuals in the Oregon fishing community about the effects of COVID-19 on their income. The survey reported that 95% of respondents had suffered negative impacts due to the pandemic. In response, the EOS mission was created: “to give the coastal seafood economies a boost as they recover from restaurant closures and other issues related to COVID-19”. My goal this summer is to participate in smaller projects that help advance the larger EOS mission.

I have a few different projects I will be working on this summer. The first is creating a social media campaign to boost the reach of EOS content. Part of this campaign will include short videos to highlight different members of the fishing community. I will also be working on creating a way to analyze the effectiveness of the outreach program “Shop at the Docks”. Shop at the Docks provides tours of the Newport fishing docks every Friday. The goal of these tours is to show the public how to purchase seafood directly from fishers. All of these duties aim to increase the public’s awareness of issues facing coastal communities.

The project I am starting on right away is the social media campaign. I will post infographics and seafood recipes on a weekly basis on the EOS social media. Hopefully, this will increase the number of people these resources reach. If you’re interested in keeping up with our social media you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @EatORSeafood! If we are able to reach more people and increase the number of people buying seafood from fishermen, then we may be able to slightly offset the other negative impacts these coastal communities are facing. Hopefully, these projects will help the community enough so individuals can bounce back from COVID-19 impacts and reach a pre-pandemic economy.

The EOS goal ties directly into the broader goals of Oregon Sea Grant. Oregon Sea Grant’s mission is to be “a catalyst that promotes discovery, understanding, and resilience for Oregon coastal communities and ecosystems”. EOS is directly impacting the resilience of Oregon coastal communities by increasing financial buy-in. EOS also increases interactions between fishers, scientists, policymakers, and the public. My hope for the summer is to use my projects to strengthen the connection of fishermen with other community members. Then fishers can use these connections to help build a more resilient fishing community. I am excited to see where this summer goes and will keep you all updated throughout my journey as a Summer Scholar!

Sea Grant Scholars

Learning through experience, for the future of our oceans

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