Tag Archives: Oregon Sea Grant

Breaking Bandon

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Greetings Readers!

I can’t believe it’s week eight already!  I feel like the less time I have left here at Wild Rivers Coast Alliance the more things I have to do.  Thankfully every now and then I catch a glimpse of one of my alma mater’s glorious mascots and I am encouraged to march onward.

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Tomorrow I will be going back to Port Orford to help some members of the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team work on the “Quest” project I had mentioned in my last post.  This is very exciting because there are few Quest activities on the South Coast!  I hope that after tomorrow I will have a better idea of how I can construct my own Quest activity so I can create a couple for Bandon before I leave.  Presently, the Quest begins at the Visitor Center (and the future site of a new interactive Marine Education Center), ends at the Port of Port Orford (unique because it is one of only six “dolly docks” in the world – where gigantic hoists lift the vessels in and out of the water each day), and covers historic and scientific topics such as: low tide, intertidal organisms, the history of Battle Rock, Red Fish Rocks Marine Reserve, and cannery history.  Not only are Quests fun, outdoor learning adventures that are great for all ages, but they have the potential to increase and renew a sense of community pride in the town and its assets.  Referred to as “community treasure hunts” each Quest requires a closer look at the environment and is centered around a specific topic such as sustainability or invasive species.  I think this will be a great way to build each communities’ interest in the natural wonders they have on the South Coast, and maybe even act as a gateway to some new education programs.

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A view of Battle Rock Park and the Red Fish Rocks Marine Preserve

Education programs are a challenge in and of themselves.  In order to create any kind of sustainable ecotourism, there needs to be interest in and knowledge of the environment since all tourism depends on the environment.  The top obstacles to implementing education programs in schools are a lack of money and time to either: a). Fund teachers to receive the training to teach various marine and terrestrial science classes (assuming the teachers have the time to go through the training and find spots where the aforementioned programs would fit into their lesson plans) or b). Find someone who already had the necessary knowledge and is willing to give up their time (and probably any hope of getting paid).  It is important to teach future generations that if the environment isn’t properly taken care of, lots of money and time will eventually need to go into fixing it.  One problem whose solution I believe lies in marine education programs, is inspiring younger generations to return to fishing; but the problem is that getting them interested in fishing isn’t even the biggest obstacle to overcome.  It’s extremely difficult for young fishermen to enter the industry because of limited entry and the high cost of permits, boats, and the necessary equipment.  But if you can’t younger generations to join the cause, then how do you create non-fishery related business in communities who have fished for hundreds of years?

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Ecotourism to the rescue!  Now while this is yet another topic that an infinite list of possible setbacks and issues, as I said in my previous post, I believe (along with my mentors and some of the community members) that it is truly the way to increase tourism.  However, before you create new ecosystem services, you need to get more people to stop and stay in each town.  In Port Orford one way they’re trying to solve this problem is with a new visually stunning interactive Marine Center that would be located in the hub of the city at Battle Rock Park.  The proposed center will have research facilities that can be seen by guests, a near water research facility, a deep ocean research laboratory, live fishery and fish buying , docent tours, touch tanks, and a seafood research facility.  Since this would truly be a building unlike any other on the South Coast, it would be a great chance to link future research and programs with ongoing ones in Coos Bay and on the North Coast.  Hopefully it will not only attract people who might want to work in the center or research labs, but educate residents and guests as well.  It would be wonderful if the new center could facilitate educational programs for local schools; this would introduce science as something that’s interesting and going on right in their backyard!

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For the rest of the week I will be getting ready for our Summer Scholars Symposium that’s this Friday at the Hatfield Marine Center.  Next week is my last week in Oregon!  Besides working on a couple Quest projects for Bandon, I’m not sure what else is in store for me, but I can imagine I’ll find something to keep myself busy.

Week 8: More Field Work

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This week was one of the busiest ones yet! It was basically a repeat of the field work we did in Willapa Bay, Washington, except it was here in Yaquina Bay. We put out cameras every day, in addition to fish traps and more tethered crabs. It was great to get so much fresh air, but I was definitely exhausted by the end!

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One of our tethered crabs molted its hook (empty molt on the left and actual crab on the right); the size difference after just one night is incredible!

After all the hard work, I managed to get away to Seattle for the weekend, where I had never been before! My favorite part was seeing the Pike Place Market, where they were selling tons of fresh seafood.

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Adult Dungeness crab for sale; it is easy to forget how large they get when you’re working with ones that are only 2 cm wide!

I did some walking around the city too, and even made it to a Mariner’s game. The trip was short, but oh so sweet, and I can’t wait to go back. It’s good to know Seattle loves the ocean as much as I do!

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The coolest bike rack I have ever seen

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Cool sculpture on the waterfront; the aquarium is in the background

Sadly, it doesn’t look like it will be possible to get through all our video before this wonderful adventure comes to an end. However, I may be able to do some analysis on other data, to get more practice. Our final presentations are on Friday, so I have this week to prepare for that and get as much video analysis done as I can. I can’t wait to see what everyone else has been doing!

To Road Trip or not to Road Trip: That is the question.

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There are few things in this life more enjoyable than driving down Highway 101, taking in the stunning coastal views, and sipping on a delicious coffee!  Last week I had the chance to get out of the office for a few days to visit the towns of Port Orford, Gold Beach, and Brookings.  The purpose of this trip was to go over the asset list that I have amassed for each town, but more importantly to actually see all the attractions I’ve thus far only seen on a computer screen!  Coffee in hand I departed Bandon early Monday morning and headed South where I met with the following: Jodi Fritts (City Administrator) and Sandy Vieira (Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce) of Gold Beach, Annette Klinefelter (assistant principal at Kalmiopsis Elementary School) of Brookings, Tyson Rasor (Coastal Tourism Liaison), and Jim and Karen Auburn (the Mayor and his wife) of Port Orford.

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Surprisingly the sentiments in each town towards coastal tourism were shockingly similar.  They all understood that changes would need to be made, and were more than willing to do what it takes to improve the South Coast!  But as eager as each city was, they were also cognizant of the possible push back from some community members towards an increase in tourism.  Since I’m here specifically to increase tourism, I was baffled as to why anyone wouldn’t be for it, especially if it meant their town would be more prosperous.  After discussing the problem at length I believe that I have a better understanding of where the locals are coming from.  One of their worries is that by better advertising the town’s “secret and local gems” (things such as the best swimming hole, or a really great campsite) the number of visitors will increase and they will lose ownership of their local treasure.  The second common concern I heard voiced was that people don’t want to add traditional tourist attractions that would change the character of their town (things such as a boardwalk with games and rides, or souvenir shops.)  Furthermore there are those who think their town is fine the way it is, and they don’t think tourism is useful.  The difficult question remains: how do you create more opportunities for tourism without changing the town?  Presently the main problem is that droves of people pass through these four towns on their way up or down the 101.  They will probably stop to get gas, use the restroom, buy a snack, and maybe even walk around for a while; but how do you get them to stay?  Like an onion this question has many layers and on a couple occasions has made my eyes water in my attempt to find an answer to this big picture problem!

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After determining that increasing ecotourism (something that the community members were interested in and something I feel is very tangible) would probably be the best way to increase coastal tourism, I was naturally faced with another slew of questions and drawbacks that were seriously messing up my plans!  Sadly that is the reality behind this whole project.  It is one thing to come up with ideas, research them, and find support, but it is another thing entirely to actually make it happen.  For example: I’ve heard that the coast of Oregon has some of the best kayaking around, however, in my research I found that there is only one place that will take you out on trips and nowhere on the South Coast can you rent a sea kayak!  Naturally my first thought was simply “Well, let’s put kayak rental stands out by the beach!”  Problem solved.  Case closed.  Sadly this was easier said than done as I realized that the reason why no one rents sea kayaks is that the insurance is too high and because of the coast’s characteristic howling winds, much too dangerous for many to take kayaks out on their own.  I ran into similar problems as I investigated similar ecotourism rental opportunities such as SCUBA, surfing, and snorkel gear rentals.  The end product of this has been that I simply have no idea what to do, and after being highly annoyed with this fact for a number of weeks, I’m becoming more accepting of it.

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The reality is that I am only on the South Coast for ten weeks, which is not nearly enough time to even scratch the surface of the tourism issue.  So in my remaining weeks here my projects and goals (or as I like to call them, recommendations to the future me) are thus: 1). Look into the pros and cons of ecotourism as well as new activities to promote, 2). Work to develop “Quest” projects in the area (free-choice learning adventures that use clues and hints to encourage participants to discover the natural, cultural, and historical treasures of each place and its community.), 3). Look into the development and implementation of marine and terrestrial education programs that increase the understanding of issues and resources that are pertinent to each community, and 4). Finish my ecological “summit to seastacks” summary for the area that will be covered by the upcoming scenic bike pathway in Port Orford.

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This past weekend I was visited by a couple of my friends from UC Santa Cruz!  With all the hiking, exploring, s’more eating, and wine tasting, it was truly a wonderful weekend on the South Coast!

Previously on Bandon by the Sea…

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Greetings readers!  I must admit that I have fallen a bit behind in my blog posts, but never fear because I have many new stories to tell, as well as some new adventures in my future!  A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to sit in on a call between my two mentors and some of the people who work in NOAA’s fisheries management department; the hot topic of discussion, Coho Salmon restoration on the South coast of Oregon.  More specifically the call was a discussion of how to go about creating a “universal salmon calculator” that would detail the benefits of restoration as well as identifying the permanent economic benefits such as number of jobs created.  While most of the conversation went over my head, I managed to understand the key points as well as the bottom line.  In order to get people to donate money to the cause, there has to be a way to determine the salmon’s value when populations return that is universal across all areas.  Currently there are many different ways to calculate this, each more confusing than the other.  One proposed idea was to look at the return in terms of its landscape value; i.e. how many total acres of salmon habitat have been restored or how many miles of stream have opened up.

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In addition to the calculator conundrum is the lack of money to fund post-restoration monitoring.  This is very unfortunate since examining any kind of project after the fact is the most important step in conservation and restoration!  Without any kind of follow up there is no way to know if what you have done is sustainable, if it actually did what it was supposed to do, and if it is worth continuing.  Furthermore, this post restoration analysis makes it possible to create a metric of success that will interest funders.   Since money seems to be the issue, I think it would be a great idea to train community member volunteers to gather this post-restoration data.  Not only would this be relatively free of charge (besides the time it would take to train people), but I believe it would also be a great chance to educate local residents on a conservation issue that’s right in their backyard and create pride and enthusiasm for protecting their environment.  When dealing with any kind of conservation/restoration issue, the two main questions that I feel are most important are: 1. What are the benefits associated with restoration and 2. What are the values lost when harm comes to the environment?

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As has been the case with other aspects of my internship, this phone call really exemplified the point that there needs to be better communication between the scientific and non-scientific community.  Issues and topics need to be presented in a way that makes them seem approachable and like something that the general public could take part in.

In other news, I have finished my research for Travel Oregon!  For the past four weeks I have been doing an online footprint analysis of each city’s webpages as well as collecting information on lodging, shops, food, places to go, things to do, and events and festivals.  Eventually this will all be fed into Travel Oregon’s orb so it can populate the site and beef up the information on the South Coast (since it is currently lacking basically all areas of information).  My next step will be to meet with people involved in the communities who are on our “Rural Tourism Steering Committee” to run all the information by them, and just get a general feel for each town as well as the possible pros and cons of increasing tourism in the area.  My hope is that the end product of this project will be two-fold: 1. A community calendar will be uploaded to the Travel Oregon site so that local events can be better publicized and visitors can plan trips around them. 2. That an interactive map will be available for each town’s asset such that when you search for something, a map with its location as well as the locations of things to do around it pops up.

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My internship has reached the halfway mark!  This was celebrated at the Da Vinci Days festival in Corvallis where I got a chance to catch up with all the other interns and hear updates on their projects, work Sea Grant’s both at the festival, and explore Corvallis further.  Although the morning started off slowly, by the time noon came around (and the awesome all bike parade!) the festival was bustling and the Sea Grant booth had more visitors than we could handle.  While the occasional passerby was interested in our summer projects, the majority were fixated with the green turtle shell display and Bubbles our live and invasive red-eared slider.  As much as I would have loved to talk about my project (and believe me I could go on for hours…) I was more excited that there were so many people who were curious about marine biology and were actually asking questions.  Yay for the future generations of marine biologists!  Another highlight of this wonderful weekend was getting the chance to hear the awe-inspiring Jane Lubchenco speak.  To be in the presence of such a strong woman who has not only been an integral part in bridging the gap between the scientific and public communities, but is the first woman to serve as a NOAA administrator, gave me such hope for the future (not to mention many goose bumps)!  I was however saddened to see that with the exception of my fellow scholars, there was basically no one else around our age in attendance.  Just more proof that strengthening communication and involvement in science in paramount!

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One trip down, one to go!  This next week I will be leaving Bandon and venturing down to coast to the towns of Port Orford, Gold Beach, and Brookings!  I’m so excited to get to visit the places that up till now have only researched on the Internet.  Curry County here I come!

Week Four: Busy As A Bee, Happy As A Clam!

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I’m never sure as to what each week will bring here in Coos Bay. Every week has always managed to top the previous and this week was no exception. Tuesday, Scott, Jim, and I boated down to Indian Point to start the ODFW’s annual cockle survey. Using ArcGIS I generated 60 random points and uploaded the locations of these 60 points onto a GPS. These 60 points would serve as our sampling sites. We would lay down one square meter quadrats at the waypoints found on the GPS and rake a four tine rake over the quadrat once and record and collect the cockles found. Then we would turn 90 degrees and rake one more time and record the number of cockles found and collect them as well. This was repeated for each quadrat.

Raking for Pacific Heart Cockles at Indian Point

On Thursday we did this same process, only this time at Valino Island. Valino Island is a protected area and Indian Point is an area known for heavy commercial harvest of cockles. We chose these two sites in order to compare how harvest (or lack thereof) affects cockle size and recruitment over time. While Indian Point was very sandy Valino Island was quite the opposite. Valino Island is essentially a mud flat and it is easy to get stuck and sink. Scott and Jim had to pull me out of the mud several times, but not before musing—i.e., laughing—over how funny they thought my predicament was.

 

Stuck in the mud at Valino Island

When we returned back to the ODFW I placed the cockles into tanks of circulating water in order to take accurate wet weights. When clams are left out of water they tend to spit water out of their siphons which can give you inaccurate weight data; this is why we placed the clams back into water before recording weight. I also recorded shell length, height, and fatness which will be used in our analysis. Using R we ran some preliminary statistical tests that suggest that Valino Island, the reserve area, has much larger cockles but Indian Point has higher amounts of recruitment.

We also have been continuing our red rock crab surveys and we were lucky enough to have the pleasure of working alongside Sylvia Yamada, a professor and research scientist from OSU. Sylvia has been doing work throughout the years on the invasive green crab and was a delight to work with. Her plethora of knowledge and fascinating anecdotes made for a great week of crab processing. She brought Fukui traps, a Japanese trap that allows all sizes of crabs to walk through. We had been using box traps which bias samples by not letting the larger crabs in. However we did run into some trouble with the Fukui traps: the seals ate all our bait!

Scott, Larry, Sylvia, and I processing red rock crabs

The notorious bait thief!

Thursday was considerably out of the ordinary. Dean, a fish biologist for the ODFW, invited me along to process yellow-eyed rockfish with him. It was truly a treat as yellow-eyed rockfish have a harvest limit of two tons per year—a very small allowance—and are not often encountered. We recorded lengths and weights of the rockfish and also recorded their sex and stage of maturity. Dean also pulled otoliths from the rockfish. Otoliths are ear bones and are used to determine the age of a fish. We even had encountered a few fish that had been eaten by hagfish, which enter through the gills and eat the fish from the inside out. The fish remains whole but the body is completely flaccid as all its musculature and organs have been consumed. It was very surreal to see. And on top of the fun of handling some cool fish, a buyer stopped by to purchase halibut from the boat we were working with and gave us all brownies. Brownies for breakfast: how could I say no to that?

Yellow-eyed rockfish

Later in the week, Jim Carlton, an expert on the subject of Japanese tsunami marine debris (JTMD) and invasive species, came to visit OIMB to give a lecture on the incoming debris and teach a class on the topic of biological invasions. In a previous blog post I mentioned how Scott and I had discovered a Japanese pallet that had washed ashore. We had sent the samples and pictures we had taken to Jim and during his visit he informed us that the pallet had come from the Morinaga-dairy business, a famous dairy business in Yamato which is located in the metropolis of Tokyo. It was determined that the pallet contained various hydroids, Mediterranean mussels (M. galloprovincialis), pelagic barnacles known as Lepas, as well as jingle shells (Anomia cytaeum). Jingles are not commonly found on JTMD which made it an interesting find.

There is no such thing as a dull weekend at OIMB. Friday night the director, Jan, announced that a dying dolphin had washed up on Bullard’s Beach in Bandon and was hoping to have help in retrieving it. And so, Saturday morning I had the opportunity to drive to Bandon with a group of friends to help Jan retrieve the dolphin so that it could be dissected in the Birds and Mammals course. After about fifteen minutes of combing Bullard’s Beach we found the dolphin, loaded it onto a stretcher and carried it up and over the dunes to the truck to be hauled back to OIMB. The dolphin weighed over 200 lbs. but with one person on each corner of the stretcher it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be to carry. Though, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little sore!

Recovering a striped dolphin for dissection

As you can see, the birds had gotten to the specimen before we did

This coming week I’ll be heading to Corvallis to talk to the public about my summer work and Oregon Sea Grant. Each week always unfolds a new and exciting surprise and I’m ready to see what that will be this week! Until next time!