The Queen of King Tides

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Meagan Hayes

As much as I would love to be referencing myself with this title, I’d have to say my mentor is the Queen and I am but a princess of the tides.

What are King Tides?

Week two was a whirlwind for me that picked up right at the end, but let’s start with the knowledge bombs first.

Many people are still new to the term King Tides so I wanted to discuss a little bit of the science behind the grand daddy of tides. Although Oregon experiences their highest high tides in the winter, some places around the world (like Hawaii) also have theirs in the spring/summer. The height of the tides has to do with the Moon’s proximity to the Earth and the Earth’s proximity to the Sun. When all three are aligned at there closest proximity to each other (the Moon at perigee and the Earth at perihelion) the tides reach their highest heights.

It’s always been fascinating to me how much the Moon influences our life on Earth and this project has helped me explore that even more. I also love listening to the TED radio hour and they JUST brought up one from the archives called “Peering Into Space,” so if you’re interested in hearing more about the universe take a listen! http://www.npr.org/2013/02/15/172136499/peering-into-space

Oregon experiences its King Tides with the New Moon in winter.

Back to Hawaii: A week a two ago the islands were experiencing their King Tides and I noticed through researching their project that the news was alllll over it. University of Hawaii Sea Grant made many appearances on news stations and their photo initiative got a lot of press. For us the publicity is harder because the tides have yet to be catastrophic for the Oregon coast. This is a GREAT thing, but it makes drawing in the public to participate difficult. The Oregon King Tides aren’t urgently impacting us yet, but tracking them can still be so beneficial for predicting issues the coast may have with sea level rise in the future.

Beyond the Tides

Outside of my exploration of other King Tides projects I got to sit in on a few meetings within the department regarding another sea level rise project and the content of the website. Meetings are often regarded as boring but I enjoy getting to see the inner workings of the department. I see this a great opportunity to gain insight as to what I want to do with my future and also witness how state government functions behind the scenes. I really appreciated my chance to discuss this in my expectations meeting as well!!

I’m just so dramatic, really.

Another great opportunity I have with this internship is the time I have to explore GIS and Photoshop. I’ll be spending much more time trying to learn GIS but have yet to create anything impressive (or at least pretty,) so here’s something I was able to do in 5 minutes on photoshop! The techniques are interesting and hard to master, but I hope to do some cool things towards the end of the internship with any new skills I’ve learned.

Portland Round 2

As for the end of the week I discovered I was yet again off to Portland for the weekend. One of life best friends had a break from her naval duties and I got to see her for the first time in about 2 years. We enjoyed the sunny Portland weather and sipped wine on the balcony of a friend’s condo in the Pearl District. It was very bougie and quite a dream. We also went about 40 minutes East of Portland to have fun in nature and get some mountain air. A very refreshing week (:

Some place somewhere in the PNW

That was until I came home Sunday and the cough I’ve had for over a month got even worse. Last week the doctors said I had asthma and told me to come on back if nothing improved with my new, fancy inhaler. Well I’m heading back because I sound like I’ve smoked a pack a day for 30 years (I’m 21 so I hope that puts this all into perspective.) I’m hoping the holiday tomorrow is fun and that I have meds coursing through my veins by then.

Cheers to week 2 and getting healthy!

Golf Gorse

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Catie Michel

Boy oh boy has it been a busy week!

I thought I’d take some time this week to talk about my workplace at the Wild Rivers Coast Alliance (referred to hereafter as the WRCA). The WRCA is the philanthropic arm of the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, and it funds various projects that focus on the conservation, economy, and community of the South Coast of Oregon. The WRCA itself is funded by the net proceeds from the Bandon Preserve, one of the five courses on the resort (more about golf later).

Not only is the WRCA located on a world renowned golf resort, I am convinced that the office I am working in is actually out of a fairy tale.

Almost every morning, Dustin (my fellow scholar), Miles (our mentor), and I are graced with the painfully adorable presence of a black-tailed doe and her ~three week old fawn.
The stately conference room sports your choice of free tea or coffee (I don’t need much more than that in life) and walls made entirely of glass overlooking a forest of Douglas fir.
The window next to Dustin and I’s desks overlooks a pond sprinkled with water lilies and a pleasant walkway lined with a handful of foxglove flowers. (According to Miles, foxglove [pictured below] is called such because the blooms are juuuust big enough for a fox to snick their snouts in).
Sometimes we see another doe with TWINS. Seeing two baby deer is way more fawn than one. (Thought we were finished with the puns? Think again…).
There is a labyrinth in the forest next to the office. Feel like taking a calming, meditative break to clear the mind after a long day of contributing to the common good of the wonder that is the Oregon South Coast? Do not fret, the WRCA has got you.

Momma doe and baby. Stay tuned for the twins, referred to hereafter as Intern 1 and Intern 2.

The conference room – I feel important when I sit in there.

Digitalis purpurea; foxglove.

Don’t tell the folks at the golf resort this (it might put a wedge between them and I), but be-fore working here, golf seemed boring to me. This week though, Dustin and I were fortunate enough to play a whole round on the Preserve, and it was a blast. I’m very lousy at golf, but the jaw-dropping views and my entirely-founded-in-luck Par 3 let me putt my overall embarrassing score behind me.

Not pictured: the ruthless, highly flammable, invasive bush that is Gorse. Before the resort existed, stands of this plant stretched as far as the eye can see and encroached on native wildlife habitat. Seeds of this plant can lie dormant for over 50 years…I sure hope this view won’t transform from a golf course into a golf gorse…

My “I got a Par 3 but I don’t know how and it’ll likely never happen again” face.

In other news, I have been continuing my exploration of this region and have found my go-to sunset spot. My roommates and I have started a tradition of getting DQ blizzards (hello, childhood) and posting up on a beach so aptly named: Sunset Bay.

Sunset bae

I am both settling into this place and becoming more excited about it as the days go on. It has become a daily routine for me to stop, think, and take a moment to acknowledge how grateful I am to be here with this program. Thanks for reading!

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

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Katie Gregory

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. :/

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!

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

A tourist in my own life

Posted on June 26, 2017 by Allie Blanchette

I never thought I’d be the person to experience culture-shock. I especially never expected it to happen in my home-country, in a town not that different from the place I grew up. I’m from a small town in Maryland, a suburb grown out of farm country at the intersection of two decently small highways. I went off to college in Los Angeles, excited to be on the west coast and ready to adapt to the city life as quickly as possible. Four years later, I considered myself a local.

One week ago today, I was graduating from UCLA, packing up my bags, and getting ready to fly up to Oregon. I’d never been to Oregon until this week, but from google images and the TV show Portlandia, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for: lots of trees, lots of water, and some pleasantly quirky Oregonians. It wasn’t until I got here that I realized how different Newport (the town I am currently living in) is from Los Angeles, and even Maryland.

This past Wednesday I wanted to go into town. The one small thing standing between our Sea Grant Intern dorms and the rest of Newport is one very large bridge. I don’t have a car, so I decided I’d take the bus, just like I’d always done in LA. Turns out there is only one bus in Newport and it runs a total of five loops around the town per day. I managed to somehow catch the last bus, which is harder than it seems as there are no bus signs here. My confusion with this was confirmed once on the bus as a gentleman informed me “It’s Newport, we don’t have signs.” The casual irregularity of this system was further enforced when the bus driver told me “You just gotta holler at me when you want to get off.” So, I hollered as best I could and strolled off the bus about a block past the store I was aiming to go to. Once ready to go home, I faced my next challenge of getting home without the bus running. I asked the women in the store if there was a taxi service. They said no, “It’s Newport, you’re lucky to even have the bus running.” I half-heartedly asked if uber existed here? Definitely not. So, is my best option to walk across the bridge? “Yes,” they said, “but hold on to the railings, it’s really windy.” And windy it was. I don’t know what the speed was, but it was windy enough that every time someone walked into the store, the door would burst open and rattle the ceiling tiles. It was the kind of wind that gives you a little shove forward while walking if you pick your foot up at the right time. So, I braced myself, held on to the railing, and walked across this bridge like an obvious out-of-towner. I’d also like to point out that I have a rather large fear of heights, and this bridge is 246 feet tall (according to Wikipedia).

Yaquina Bridge

I survived the walk across the bridge, with a burst of adrenaline as the prize for conquering my fear. I decided to take this opportunity to go for a run and explore some of the surrounding area. I picked a route that would send me to a nice beach run. As I’m running, I look to my left to discover a surprise secret waterfall carved into the bluff right next to me. It was amazing! A secret not-so-little waterfall hiding in the cliffs! It must have been about 30 feet tall. I ran over and stuck my feet in. The cold water felt as refreshing as if I were drinking it. I climbed all around the edges of the waterfall, sliding in the dark gray mud like a little kid.

The magical waterfall

What is this mysterious place that I’m in? A place where they don’t have ubers (even my small town in Maryland has uber) and Mother Earth humbly juts out waterfalls right onto the beach. I read a Humans of New York post recently which reminds me a lot of this point in my life. The interviewee was describing how she wanted to move to a new country because she wanted to be a tourist in her own life again. After four years of trying to become a local in Los Angeles, a city swimming with tourists, I find myself in a state I’ve never been, in a sleepy beach-town with a population of ten thousand and once again a tourist in my own life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaquina_Bay_Bridge

New Age in Newport

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Meagan Hayes

As a transplant from Monterey, CA I was definitely excited to return to a scenic coastal town after living in the Bay Area for four years. Over the past year I spent every free weekend traveling back and forth between the city and the California’s Central Valley, so getting to stay in one place for two months sounded like a treat. Bonus points for the tall trees and windy beaches, us NorCal kids don’t expect to do much swimming anyway.

My first day on the job I drove out to Salem with my mentor, Meg, and quite frankly chatted her ear off. In the Salem office I met a good amount of the Department of Land Conservation and Development staff and all of them seemed to take interest in my project. A few of them also had some hand in it over the years and I believe they were excited to see where I could take it being that it is my main focus during my time here.

Beauty of the bridge.

The official title of my project is the Oregon King Tides Photo Initiative. This project is actually an international initiative dependent on citizen science. Coastal communities around the world are asked to take pictures of “King Tides”, or the highest tides of the year, and standard high tides for comparison. This helps coastal management organizations visualize and plan for the ways in which these communities may be affected by sea level rise. Newport is a prime location to witness the King Tides in the winter and is where I’ll be working for the next 10 weeks.

Although a lot of my work involves sorting through photos and developing ways to discuss the importance of this project, I will have the chance to do some field work! Many of the photos sent in do not include the “normal” high tides comparison shots. Throughout the summer I will travel up and down the coast a few times to make sure we gather the missing pieces and develop a clear message about why this project matters.

Drew some inspiration from past posters, but still proud!

My first week was mostly full of correcting the photos uploaded to the Flickr page that had missing or scrambled information. Meg had mentioned that most of the participants were from *much* older generations… and it showed just a bit. One of my own goals this summer is to help Meg create a stronger social media platform for the project so people of all ages are informed and start to get involved (follow @oregonkingtides on Instagram!). Social media has be become an incredible marketing tool in the last 5 years and I see so much potential in it. If used correctly, projects like this and others that depend on citizen science can truly gain massive numbers of dedicated participants and continue to educate the public on why the issue of our rapidly-changing planet is important.

My favorite part of the week was getting to do some graphic design work for posters being used at an upcoming beach bash. This project has so many great opportunities for me to be creative. I also feel obligated to learn as much as I can about photography which has really helped get me outside to explore and take some photos.

Tell them Meagan sent ya

On my lunch breaks I usually grab a Dutch Bros (they are a true delicacy in California!) and head to the beach to play around with my camera. I’m hoping I’ll soon be contacted by Dutch Bros offering me a large sum for advertising their coffee so well.

Lastly, I found both a gym and a natural foods store where I can lift weights and purchase my favorite vegan snacks. My personal goal is to hit a couple personal records while I’m here and try some new recipes out on my roommates. If anyone misses work due to food poisoning that’s probably my fault, apologies in advance! Newport may be small but it’s full of kind and passionate people. Cheers to week one and embarking on a new adventure.

It took me five minutes to figure out how to set the exposure on my camera to take this picture but I’d say it was worth it!

Week 1: Introductions – To Oregon, my co-workers, program-mates, job, and more!

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Katie Gregory

*Please click on photos throughout to view associated captions*

Week 1:

After a long day of exceptionally smooth travel (still thankful for that) I arrived in Corvallis, OR at the Oregon State University campus ready for orientation the next morning. On Monday we met up for a small, informal breakfast to finally meet the program coordinators face-to-face rather than via email, as well as the other Summer Scholars. The lax atmosphere continued throughout the day as we played (dare I say) fun ice breakers and listened to presentations on what to expect from our summers/ what Oregon Sea Grant is all about. We even went to lunch at a great little café for Mexican food before heading out to Newport to the Hatfield Marine Science Station (OSU’s marine campus). There, I got my first glimpse of Oregon coastline and met my mentor for the first time; Tony D’Andrea, project leader/supervisor for Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife’s Shellfish and Estuarine Habitat Assessment of Coastal Oregon (SEACOR) project through the Marine Resources Program. I got to spend the night there and hang out with my fellow scholars and other students staying in the housing on campus, which was a very fun way to relax after a day of information overload and recovering from jetlag.

Day 2 began with a riveting session of paperwork and reading of lengthy protocols to learn just what it means/takes to be part of ODFW. We took the forms mobile as we started the drive from Newport to my final destination of Charleston- I signed many a form to indicate my understanding of safety procedures and agency policies (the scenic ocean views from the pacific highway were a frequent and welcomed distraction throughout). I felt very official and excited to be an employee of a state agency that does so much. Once we got to Charleston, a town on Coos Bay where I would be living and working, I checked into my room at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (The University of Oregon equivalent of OSU’s Hatfield campus) and unpacked a little bit before meeting back up with Tony. We toured the lab we’d be using which is shared with researchers from the South Slough estuary, the garage where all our equipment is stored, the boat, and the ODFW office where I got to meet more members of the agency. Everyone was very nice and answered my barrage of questions (I feel like my first week was essentially me asking everyone a million questions). I learned that my position would be aiding in field work for the shellfish assessments of Coos Bay, which would help with informing fishery regulations for the area. I would also be an extra set of hands for whichever ODFW project needed me, and I expressed a desire to be part of their community outreach and education programs, as I have a growing interest in science communication.

Wednesday morning was a 5 AM start time for field work on the boat, using a sampling method called megacoring (more on that later, when I can use photos to accompany the description: a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?). It was a brisk day, with a LOT of wind. Common for these parts, but not what I’m used to calling “summer”. The water tends to stay in the 50’s so we donned dry suits paired with fleece onesies underneath, many base layers, extra socks, boots, and our ODFW hats (which I’m still stoked about) to stay warm. After a few hours in the field, we returned to land to rinse off the boat and sampling materials. I discovered there’d been a tear in my suit and I ended up soaked from the waist down- just my luck, but a good reintroduction to the joys of field work. Thursday (day two of 5 AM start time) was originally going to be like Wednesday, with more work from the boat and some new stuff (for me) surveying low tide habitat. However, mother nature had her own plan of very high wind speeds, so we opted to stay close to land and conduct the surveys at a nearby tidal flat site- Charleston Triangle.

Methods: The sampling strategy used for these surveys is called the Rapid Assessment Method (RAM). Previous bathymetry data is used to map tidal levels across the study area, ensuring that samples were taken across all tidal elevations. A handheld GPS is programmed with randomly generated waypoints displayed both as a grid and as points spread intermittently between rows.

At each waypoint designated “grid” a 1 m²quadrat is placed, and before any disturbance occurs, a photo is taken with the site location and waypoint number for identification purposes. Within the quadrat environmental data such as sediment temperature, anoxic layer depth, and sediment type are taken. Biological data including percent of algal or eelgrass cover on surface, shrimp borrow density, clam “show” density, and physical presence of clams living below the surface are taken. This is done by using a hand rake to disturb the top ~15 cm of sediment. Species observations are also made for a 2 m radius surrounding the quadrat, which can be used to dub the area a clam/shrimp bed, even in the absence of those organisms within the quadrat.

For the “random” waypoints the Detailed Assessment Method (DAM) is employed in addition to RAM. The supplementary data includes collecting above-ground eelgrass blades and sediment samples for total organic carbon and grain size analyses. The eelgrass samples were collected in a 0.25 m² quadrat within the larger quadrat. The placement is determined by a random number generator. The same goes for sediment samples within the larger quadrat. These waypoints are also marked with a stake and attached buoy for future megacoring sampling.

By Thursday afternoon I was pretty much exhausted from traipsing in the mud (sorry for all the yawning, Tony) as we went over ODFW’s payroll system and I was given my employee computer login, with access to project files and agency documents.

5 AM Friday came all too soon, but as we had accomplished so much the day before, and Charleston Triangle is a fairly small site, we were able to finish the rest of the waypoints quickly, resulting in an early end to the day. J I used that time to take a sizeable nap, start this blog post, and spend some time in the nearby Marine Life Center (which I know I’ll be returning to since it’s free, interesting, and the volunteers are super nice!).

I also took time throughout the evenings/weekend to make friends with other interns living in my hallway and their friends from the South Slough Estuary Research Reserve. We lit off sparklers, took many a trip to Walmart, and hiked out to waterfalls at Golden and Silver Falls State Natural Area. The beauty of Oregon is absolutely awe-inspiring, and I am so glad I get to experience it.

This place is ferntastic!

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Catie Michel

Yes, we are starting with plant puns, in dedication to my guzmania bromeliad – who unfortunately did not survive the move to Oregon. The 100 degree wind blowing through my air conditioning-less CRV for the greater portion of 13 hours did a number on the tropical-turned-houseplant that prefers gently filtered-through-understory sunlight and a slight misting in the morning. “You brought plants?” my fellow Sea Grant scholars chuckled. Beleaf it or not, I did. There’s no need to read between the pines…I just like plants.

Polystichum minutum. Golden and Silver Falls Natural Area, June 2017.

My first week in southern Oregon has indeed been ferntastic. Having never visited the state, I am pleasantly surprised by its breadth of diverse vegetation, which significantly differs from the dry, Mediterranean climate of where I attend school in San Luis Obispo, California, and the semiarid climate of my hometown of Denver, Colorado. A favorite plant encountered here so far is the sword fern (Polystichum minutum). Many other understory plants I have become familiar with include vine maple (Acer circinatum), salal (Gualtheria shallon), and pacific rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum).

Having only ever lived either near central Californian coastal areas or landlocked mountainous areas, I have been most excited to encounter a subspecies of lodgepole pine: P. contorta var. contorta, or shore pine.

P. contorta var. contorta. Source.

These trees have specially adapted to living conditions too harsh for their fellow lodgepole cousins. They are therefore the dominant species here in their northern range, growing in rocky sites and sandy soil and surviving powerful salty winds. The unique shore pine is of keen interest to me as it is a symbolic representation of why I feel quite at home here: coastal Oregon = forests + the ocean. The southern Oregon coastal mountains support highly diverse plant species because the region is a transition zone between the Coastal Range and the Klamath/Siskiyou Mountains.

Ecoregions of Oregon. Source.

Learning the ecology of the places you visit creates a special connection between humans and nature. Instead of just aesthetically experiencing the views, fresh air, and songbird calls, the species of plants and animals around you become familiar as you learn their names. For those of us who are particularly ecologically inclined, this is much like seeing old friends*.

This type of outdoor experience is known as experiential tourism, and it is what I will be working on this summer with the Wild Rivers Coast Alliance for Oregon’s Southern Coast. Much like interpretation, experiential tourism encourages the visitor to learn about the contextual and ecological meaning of what they are experiencing in order to form a long-term, transformational relationship between visitor and environment rather than a distant, transactional relationship. This type of interaction with nature creates personal meaning in the tourist and not only provides an understanding of the species’ names, it also encourages a deeper understanding about the species’ important role in its balanced and complex greater ecosystem.

Our project aims to build a sustainable, experiential tourism program for this region that enhances the resilience of the South Coast’s livelihoods, people, and ecosystems through economic, community, and conservation initiatives. We then hope to create a tourism development training program to help other coastal communities throughout the country prioritize ecosystem health and economic opportunity in environmentally sensitive and significant places. Stay tuned for more!

Silver Falls, June 2017.

*(Fronds)

Scrubs, Smurfs, and Sea Stars

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Zach Clemens

Have you ever seen the TV show Scrubs? If not, then you are missing out on some of the greatest television in the history of television. If so, then you can sort of understand what this week has been like for me. Scrubs follows three young doctors (JD, Turk, and Elliot) as they begin their careers at Sacred Heart Hospital. It’s hilarious. My sister and I can recite entire episodes, having both watched every season at least 3 times (shoutout to Netflix). But that’s not the point. The point is, when JD, Turk, and Elliot first arrive as interns, they know next to nothing. Everything they do is a learning experience, and every time they accomplish even the most menial task it’s a huge victory. That’s basically my life right now. This week I began my post as a Sea Grant Scholar working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in their Marine Reserves Program. With me are two other Sea Grant Scholars, Sarah and Neal (the Elliot and Turk to my JD (I get to be JD because I’m writing this)). Together, we’re taking on the world, one marine reserve at a time.

My inspirations. From the left, Turk aka Neal, JD aka me, and Elliot aka Sarah.

Instead of Scrubs we get survival suits

As the three of us leave the office every day, we all walk with a little bit of a strut, just like the Scrubs characters after a day in the hospital. You can’t help but feel a little proud after a day working hard for a cause that you really care about. Sometimes that involves scrambling over mussels in the rocky intertidal zone searching for sea stars. Sometimes it involves jumping into 50-degree water where you can’t see three feet in front of your face to try and catch juvenile fish. And sometimes it involves laminating papers. Just five days in, this has already been by far the most diverse work experience I’ve had, and I love it. I’ll be spending the summer undertaking ecological monitoring of Oregon’s marine reserves. Each of the five reserves is unique and monitoring all five is quite a task. Volunteer fishermen catch fish, take measurements, and release them. Longlines are also used to similar effect. Scuba divers and landers equipped with GoPros assess subtidal diversity. We also have two awesome submersible ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) that conduct underwater surveys. But the monitoring project I’ll be working most closely on certainly has the cutest name.

I’ll be spending much of the summer working with Standard Monitoring Units for the Recruitment of Fishes, also known as SMURFs. These adorable contraptions are basically a tangle of folded plastic suspended a few meters below the surface of the ocean. They serve as a great substrate for juvenile fish to take shelter in. Several have been set up inside and outside of the reserves to monitor fish recruitment. Collecting the fish involves snorkeling down with a Bincke net (pronounced binky) and grabbing the entire SMURF. Once you’ve got your SMURF in your binky (adorable right?) you take it up on the boat, collect the fish, take them back to shore and measure them. I haven’t gone SMURFing yet, but I’m really looking forward to getting out on the ocean.

Though I haven’t SMURFed, I have spent a significant amount of time in the field already. I spent Thursday and Friday morning surveying sea stars at Otter Rock and Cascade Head. Sea-star wasting disease is a gruesome viral infection which essentially causes stars to pull themselves apart and dissolve into the rock. Not a pretty sight. There have been outbreaks in the past, but in 2014 it returned to Oregon with devastating effects. Recently the prevalence of disease has seemed to subside. However, it’s unclear whether that is because the populations are recovering or because only the largest stars are highly susceptible and they have been mostly wiped out. That’s why we monitor. We crawl on our hands and knees, comb through algae, and splash through tide pools on the hunt for the “lions of the intertidal.” It’s basically a safari. Plus I’ve gotten to see the sun rising over some beautiful beaches. Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I love Ohio and Pennsylvania (where I’m from and where I went to school, respectively), but the natural beauty of Oregon blows the Midwest out of the water.

Hard at work surveying in the intertidal

A beautiful family of healthy sea stars

It’s been a spectacular start to the summer so far. I’m working for an awesome cause undertaking an awesome project in an awesome place and meeting some awesome people. It’s awesome. What has stood out to me so far is how quickly I’ve been able to get involved with meaningful work. We spent one day doing hiring paperwork, and the very next day I was in the water trying to capture black rockfish in a net. Pardon my awful closing pun, but in the world of marine biology they toss you in the deep end and it’s up to you to either sink or swim. Sorry.

Subjective well-being: What’s the worth?

Posted on June 24, 2017 by Sarah Ann Coffin

Let’s Begin with an Exercise…

Look up from your screen and observe the things around you.

As I do so myself, it is not difficult to estimate the market value of the couch, rug, and even the land on which my cabin resides. If I were to have a yard sale tomorrow, each item could be priced with a bright orange sticker for potential buyers to assess and purchase.

“…it is not difficult to estimate the market value…”

Many appraisals of worth, similar to those that we just assigned our surrounding items, are based on the ideals supported by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Each object has a market value, which fluctuates with condition, use, and personal necessity for that thing. On a national level, our country’s resources can be assessed and quantified as Gross National Product (GNP). Simply put, everything that can be used has a worth.

“Subjective well-being: overall quality of life”.

As rational as the ideas of Gross Domestic and National Product seems, this system of assessment is flawed. Now that you have looked at the items around you, indulge me in a bit of introspection and think back to one of your happiest moments.

How do you place a value on that time? By GDP and GNP’s standards, there is no market value for the scene you just pictured or the feeling of satisfaction you may feel upon reflection. Your happiest moment can instead be categorized under a non-market (or non-use) value. Though you cannot assign a price to it, that instant of happiness adds merit to your life and increases your subjective well-being, or quality of life.

In his 1968 address to the University of Kansas, Robert Kennedy encompassed this idea of non-market value best in saying,

Robert Kennedy on Gross National Product (GNP)

“…gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Often our most valued moments are those that have no market value. This week, I have begun to delve into the literature surrounding subjective well-being (SWB), which I previously alluded to as our overall quality of life. This concept of SWB can be applied in a natural setting as well, despite our attempts to place monetary value to resources such as land, water, and forests. Though these aspects of nature are factored into our GNP, there is an element of worth that we cannot account for with simple market value. For example, many people will donate to rainforest conservation funds even though a large portion of those donors will never set foot in the rainforest themselves. The worth lies in the existence of the forest instead their use of that land.

Oregon Marine Reserves (image by Oregon State Parks).

This summer I am studying subjective well-being surrounding the protection of marine areas on the Oregon coast in the form of five marine reserves. Through administration of survey instruments tailored to our nearby fishing communities, I am working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine the economic and non-market values of these marine areas. Through the use of choice experiments, we aim to gain a more in depth understanding of the subjective well-being of residents in Oregon coast communities as they relate to forest and marine preservation.

I won’t disclose all of the “good stuff” yet, but stay tuned to this blog. I will be updating weekly with photos, articles, and summaries of my time here.

~Sarah Coffin~

Author and Oregon Sea Grant Scholar Sarah Coffin at Owen Rose Garden in Eugene, Oregon in June, 2017.

The tales we tell…

Posted on June 5, 2017 by sundd

Stories are a near universal aspect of human existence. They define who we are as a people, illustrate the values we hold as individuals, and provide a common medium by which to communicate the shared human experience. The more that I delve into my work and examine myself, the more I realize how integral storytelling is. On any given day, any single aspect of my work can ultimately be related back to some form of narrative, whether that is looking for a shared narrative or spinning some of my own novel yarns.

One way that we use stories is to connect the public, or some subset of it, to the places, resources, and activities that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) manages on their behalf. By invoking imagery, cultural values, and common experiences associated with the resources that we manage, we are able to better communicate the results of our stewardship and inform the public.

A great example of this is the outreach and education materials that the Marine Reserves Program produces.You can check out some of their work on their website. Some of this material describes the structure of the program or the status of recent monitoring trips while others communicate issues of concern, like Ocean Acidification (OA). They have produced a wonderful the wonderful video below where you can learn about what causes it and how it relates to the Oregon coast and see many of the great people that I work with.

Sometimes the stories we tell are not to convey new information but demonstrate involvement and commitment to an issue. This last week, Cat Dayger and I have been editing press releases describing the work of the Ocean Acidification Alliance (alliance). The alliance is the nonprofit we helped launch to elevate OA on the international stage. The press releases are intended to highlight the West Coast regional efforts to address OA in light of the alliance attending the Ocean Conference hosted by the United Nations in New York this upcoming week.

The alliance, as well as California, Oregon, and Washington, are all making voluntary commitments towards Sustainable Development Goal 14.3 to continue their work on global ocean change and OA. The narrative here was not to tell a new story about OA but to keep the spotlight on the issue and communicate that work is underway to understand and address it. Sometimes the issues or status of a topic can be more effectively told not with words or other traditional media but through other means…

Everyone has heard the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Most people, however, don’t usually bring charts, tables, or maps to mind when they hear this phrase, let alone matrices or databases. But data is essentially the building block, or base-unit, that scientists work with. Every dataset has a story that it can tell and part of what scientists do is to use visual, mathematical, and statistical tools to piece together the plot points of a dataset’s story, identify its main characters, and expose the details hidden beneath the surface.

During my time with ODFW, I have been hard at work creating an interactive toolset to illustrate the story behind the Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia (OAH) Monitoring Inventory which is one of the main projects I work on. The OAH Monitoring Inventory is a catalog of monitoring assets (buoys, moorings, sensors, etc.) and research projects related to OAH that helps determine where OAH is already being monitored and where it needs to be monitored more. This is very similar to the inventory a restaurant manager takes at the end of a week before ordering more supplies. However, before we can decide where to place new instruments, we must understand the “lay of the land,” as it were, by identifying where assets are located, what they are collecting, and how long have they been there. These are are just a handful of the 70+ odd bits of descriptive information that were recorded. To communicate the complexities of this in a typical narrative would be almost certainly lose some of the finer details of the inventory’s story. Unfortunately, this interactive web app still needs some refining but I hope to be able to share it soon.

Storytelling is an innate practice permeating nearly every facet of our lives. When we are at home playing a game, reading a book, or watching netflix we are ‘listening’ to the tales presented before us. Moving out into the real world to telling stories with friends around a bonfire, tall tales on social media, or drafting a press release we move from consuming to weaving our own tapestries. Framing and polishing a narrative to reflect either how we want to be perceived or best fits the situational context. Medium is yet another facet that can change the experience. Some elements of a story will be more apparent in one format and lost via another. When watching a movie of a popular book your favorite character can take on an entirely new light due to how they are portrayed. With technical information this is no less true. The takeaways one has looking at a table of values will be far different than those represented on a map or plotted in a chart. All of these differences demonstrate how deeply saturated we are in stories and how they color our perceptions and, in turn, our own personal narratives.

I look forward to the opportunity to continue to ‘tell my tales’ here to you and to the audience of my professional work.