cancelled in 2020, 2021, 2022 cuz of the planned-demic
Well well, this past Saturday, the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Sciences Center, we had an open house of sorts — 41 displays and a keynote speaker and an abalone author bringing their wisdom and work to the public.
Here are the stats, as I was a volunteer, Shift Captain:
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Subscribed
- 1655 visitors
- 41 exhibits
- 124 exhibitors
- 53 volunteers
But as all of you know, this event goes way beyond the numbers. Marine Science Day was a success because every lab committed time and energy to build an engaging and interactive display communicating your science. Your support of the HMSC outreach mission was heard throughout the day with comments like: “Every single room we went in was filled with displays where my kids could DO science” and “I had no idea that all this was happening at the Marine Science Center”. This event is built around highlighting your research and connecting with our community and in every way, this event was a success because of you.
There were mammal experts, bird experts, rock fish experts, whale experts; there were sea star experts, sea cucumber experts, kelp experts; there were oceanographers, weather experts, wave energy experts.
Many of the volunteers were students from the OSU programs.
Lots of families showed up, and alas, there were great opportunities to see what goes on with our tax money tied to marine sciences.
I talked with many of the researchers, of which there were master’s degreed folk considering getting a PhD. Most of the students are not from the coast of Oregon, or Oregon in the first place. They are interested in sharks, reefs, ocean bottoms, and all are tied to climate change and that sort of connection to their work.
A majority of the people in graduate programs are women. I talked with several, one in particular around her work with hydrophones and getting the sounds of whales, including our iconic gray whales tourists flock to the coast to view.
We talked about ethics in science, and she stated there aren’t classes around that, that is, the deep higher order thinking around scientism, science at all costs, science in the pocket of the corporations, the technocrats.
She talked about how male students are going into engineering while women are going into the biological sciences, the earth sciences.
We talked about shifting baseline disorder, that is, my reefs in the Sea of Cortez in 1970s were so robust, and not perfect for sure, but the Colorado RIVER still reached the sea back then. Now, if a dive team were to go into the places I dove, they’d be seeing their baseline of species and would then, without historical science under their belts, consider what they catalogued as what they consider the starting point for stewardship or restoration.
We talked about what she might want to do after her schooling, and she stated that she wanted to continue research, with a university.
We talked about Zoom schooling, and on-line schooling, even in the sciences, and she shook her head. She’s twenty-four years old.
I ran into Daniel Palacios, a whale researcher from Columbia. He was in the rooms where people could see his work tagging gray whales and other whales. We talked about PTSD effects on these marvelous creatures. I brought that up, how just one event — hitting that Zodiac at full throttle to chase a whale for those tags, that is, satellite monitored tags, under the whale’s flesh — might be akin to one event a human might face, running from a possible attacker in the night, and how that event for Homo Sapiens would be a critical trauma induced event, a PTSD event held the rest of her or his life.
“What does a smart whale think when these chase boats come charging after him or her, and what about the others in the pod, witnessing this trauma-induced event? Do you think about that, Daniel?”
He said he does, and he said his sort of research might be numbered because of the likelihood of that sort of trauma inducement and the fact whales are so bombarded with millions of boats and ships and noise and clutter and pollution, that the combination of all that must be creating a trauma-induciing unnatural world for them, their young, their future offspring.
Read my feature on him here: “From Colombia to Galapagos to California and OSU”
In the end, the day was okay, with clouds, rain and people coming into the Center, which is a visitor center with permanent displays and then getting to go behind the scenes into the actual labs.
There are big ideas and big research projects coming down the pike, and I’ve written about how earth sciences are just a drop in the bucket in terms of funding compared to the eye in the sky “shit.” In fact, more trillions go to satellite arrays, to terra-forming the moon or mars than goes into what actually is happeing on mother earth.
NASA requested more than $2.4 billion for Earth science in its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal. However, the omnibus spending bill enacted in late December provided just under $2.2 billion for Earth science. While that is an increase of $130 million from 2022, it comes as NASA is ramping up work on its line of Earth System Observatory missions and other projects.
At the town hall, one scientist said it was “pretty shocking” that NASA would even consider not extending those three missions given their performance and the community of researchers using data from them. Robinson again turned to financial challenges facing the overall Earth science program.
“In the case of Terra, Aqua and Aura, one of the challenges we have is that these systems, because they’ve been operating so long, they’re really expensive,” she said. NASA’s fiscal year 2023 budget request projected spending $30.7 million each on operations of Terra and Aqua and $20.5 million on Aura. One part of the senior review will be to look at reducing those operating costs, but she did offer an estimate of the range of potential reductions. (source)
But it’s even worse, since those NASA programs “looking at earth” are still space based. Here, more insight:
Earth science has long been the poor cousin of STEM programs. It takes a back seat to technology and even among the straight sciences, rocks and rivers get short shrift alongside the physical sciences—properties of matter, motion, gravity.
“It’s the least glamorous, it requires the least specialized equipment, it’s not as shiny. And the modern applications of it are less straightforward and less clear,” says Michael Walker, a high school teacher at the Village School, a 1,200-student K-12 institution in Houston.
Walker is among those calling for a bigger role for earth science in the STEM curriculum. “Our students have to start making decisions about how we use our resources, and that means they have to know what is there, how is it used, and what are the consequences,” he says. (source)
Here you go, a bonus for my Substack. ANYONE interested in funding a small subscription to the daily or at least weekly news and opinion forum?
Should We Trust Science?
Conference celebrates how the ocean connects to all of us — coastlines, people, cultures
by Paul Haeder / November 15th, 2019
Scientists working on the issue have often told me that, once upon a time, they assumed, if they did their jobs, politicians would act upon the information. That, of course, hasn’t happened. Anything but, across much of the planet. Worse yet, science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action.”
— Naomi Oreskes, author of Why Trust Science? and professor of the history of science at Harvard University
There were 60 of us with four facilitators asking us deep questions about the best ways to protest, preserve, rehabilitate and reimagine Oregon’s rocky intertidal habitat.
“What does make a community resistant and resilient?” Steven S. Rumrill, Department of Fish and Wildlife shellfish program leader, asked us all.
In a nutshell, this breakout session was a microcosm of Saturday’s conference, State of the Coast at Salishan Resort.
Three other leads to this afternoon session titled, “Complex and Connected: Holistic Approaches to Management in the Nearshore” — Sarah Gravem, OSU Marine Ecologist; Dom Kone, OSU graduate student in Marine Resource Management; and Deanna Caracciolo, Department of Land Conservation and Development – challenged us to think about issues near and dear to not only the scientists, but to us lay persons. We held onto the anchor question: “What makes the Oregon Coast vibrant, healthy and a visitor destination.”
Rumrill posed key brainstorming questions:
1. What are the primary drivers of variability in rocky habitats?
2. What are the key stressors and threats to them?
3. What proactive steps can resource managers take?
4. Think of five words associated with holistic management of rocky shores.
Coastal Confab Inspires Next Generation
This was the sixth year in a row for the State of the Coast, but this past Saturday’s was the first sold out gig, according to Shelby Walker with Oregon Sea Grant, main sponsor of the Gleneden Beach soirée.
The all-day session included the requisite keynote – Bonnie Henderson, author of several books, to include “Day Hiking: Oregon Coast,” “The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast” and “Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris.”
Even more compelling and intriguing — and dovetailed to the State of the Coast theme of looking into the future — 28 student researchers with their poster projects displayed in the Longhouse conference room, and the 10 student artists alongside their creative endeavors, with both groups being voted on by all the guests.
Projects tied to pollution, microplastics, the Pacific heat blob, hormone mimickers, ocean acidification and more are at the forefront of these highly motivated and interdisciplinary-steeped students from Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Portland State University.
I spent time talking with Reyn Yoshioka from UO, as he explained the remarkable findings in his participation in Oregon Institute of Marine Biology’s BioBlitz in the Coos Bay area. We discussed how his team’s inventory of invertebrates would be ideal to present to city and county officials, as well as groups like Rotary clubs and chambers of commerce.
“The people with political and economic clout need to see not only the work you all do, but what really is at stake if anything threatens this incredible biodiversity,” I told many of the fledging scientists and artists.
Every single one agreed. Many asked me how they might connect to myriad other stakeholders and powerbrokers in their communities.
I introduced Reyn to OSU senior in arts Kenneth Koga, whose watercolors of various elements of a vibrant ecosystem bring the scientist’s eye in focus with a much broader scope beyond just the materialistic world and into the interpretation of nature through the artist’s lens. Reyn told me “it would have been cool” to have dancers, photographers, painters, sculptors and musicians as part of the biodiversity transect inventory.
The Arts Help Define and Contextualize Science
While we received quick teach-ins (one hour presentations of eight minutes each) from researchers looking at rocky habitats, the warm Pacific blob, Oregon’s five marine reserves, sea star wasting disease, threats to Gray, fin, blue and humpback whales on the West Coast, and the status of groundfish recovery, Marion O. Rossi, OSU Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, gave a quick snapshot of Republican Governor Tom McCall’s legacy in helping preserve our coastal habitats.
Author Studs Terkel asked McCall decades ago where the heroes of the political world are. “Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky,” McCall said. “ They are people who say, ‘This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better.’”
Rossi and I talked about what better things might be done to bridge the divide between the sciences (and technology, engineering and math – STEM) and the arts.
Part of the conference included a rather telling – possibly debilitating – aspect of science and various stakeholders. I counted more than 21 agencies involved in just managing and setting plans for our rocky habitats. Unfortunately, there are many more agencies, bureaucracies, boards, quasi-legal, legislative, non-profit, industry groups with some sort of skin in the game tied to our coast.
Think of tide-pools, habitat for many juvenile species, kelp incubators, biodomes to invertebrates such as anemones and sea stars. One issue we tackled was the fact that we can love our coastlines to death; i.e., since we have so many visitors and local aficionados wanting to get into these areas, so many species are being trampled upon.
Ecological balance, keystone species and the entire web of life also were prominent discussion points for the speakers.
For instance, the wasting disease promulgated deeper response in coordinated research projects called STARS – Seastar Tragedy and Recovery Study. Sarah Gravem of OSU discussed the implications of this species’ decline most probably attributed to a virus as well as ocean conditions (warming) spurring the virus’ growth. In some areas along the Pacific Coast, there had been a 100 percent die-off of sea stars observed in 2018. Recovery has been slow.
The ecological consequences from this wasting disease hitting pisaster ochraceus that once was ubiquitous in our rocky shorelines (purple, orange, brown many-legged beauties) spurred a kind of domino effect.
• this predatory sea star feeds on the mussel Mytilus californianus and is responsible for maintaining much of the local diversity of species within certain communities
• compensatory predators come in when a die-off hits
• low sea star prey growth occurs upsetting the balance of the ecosystem
All these pieces to the marine puzzle make up the coast’s mosaic of life. With warming waters, the bull kelp die off, and then sea urchins populations explode and any sort of juvenile kelp that might attempt a foothold on rocky bottoms gets gobbled up by the armies of sea urchins.
Everything is connected in the coastal life in and around the sea.
Whose Oregon Is It?
The Oregon Coast Trail is a hiking trail along the Pacific Coast. The length depends on the use of ferries, and varies between 382 miles (615 km) and 428 miles (689 km). The trail is set out on the beach, paved roads and tracks.
– Traildino.com
“You know, the funny thing about aging is you can watch entire forests grow,” author Bonnie Henderson said. “Fifty years is a harvest rotation. I can say to the students here you will watch forests grow thanks to those with vision and persistence.”
The author made it clear that her love of the Oregon Coast Trail could have only been germinated through the auspices and hard work of forerunners like Governor Tom McCall who pushed the 1967 Oregon “beach bill,” making all beaches accessible to the public.
She went back farther, 1913, to Oswald West, the governor who made all Oregon’s public beaches highways for wagons, horses and cars. Fellows like state Parks chief Sam Boardman (retired 1950) increased the acreage for coastal parks almost 20-fold. Then Sam Dickens, a Kentuckian who ended up running the UO geology department, saw the value in knitting together all the trails in Oregon, along the coast.
The well-known Pacific Crest Trail is more than 2,600 miles long and takes five months to traverse in snow-free conditions. It’s a wild back-country affair, whereas the Oregon Coast Trail cuts through cities, highways towns and waysides. Henderson has traversed it many times.
She is fighting for more camping areas. She is also keen on her other position as communications director for the Northwest Land Conservancy, trying to get more land set aside for a reserve in Oswald Park near Cape Falcon. That’s a $10 million fund drive, of which the NWLD has procured half.
With the snow season hitting the Sierras and rampant fires in California and Oregon, many people had to forego their Pacific Coast Trail adventure and ended up on the Oregon Coast Trail in 2017 and 2018.
She rhetorically asked how long people have been hiking and walking along the trail. Jorie Clark, OSU Geology and Geophysics department, has looked at the shoreline changes dating back 18,000 years when the oceans along the Pacific were 450 feet lower than today. It was around 6,000 years ago when the ocean hit the current level.
There were glaciers along the coast dating back 14,000 years, but also evidence of people from Chile up to Oregon, before the land bridge, who went along the so-called “kelp highway” where they found enough refugia to survive, Henderson told the crowd.
Rejecting Cornell University — Art for Art’s Sake
Ram Papish apologizes to the group in his breakout session for a jump drive failure. He is wearing self-designed blue jeans with a collection of tufted puffins painted all over.
He currently lives and works out of Toledo, and his artwork is not only of interest to collectors. More importantly, he has worked with Oregon State Parks on 63 panels of interpretative work tied to our wonderfully varied ecosystems.
All along the Oregon Coast, at waysides and other locales, these illustrated panels are set throughout the tourists’ pathway. Here are just a few of the illustrated large panels:
• Salmon Life Cycle
• Tidepool Explorer
• Sea Bird Island
• Tidepool Life
• Shorebird Stopover
• Mixing Zone
He tells the mostly young students in the session that he had to fight hard to become successful, and he said it was just last year when he began to feel somewhat secure in his artistic profession.
He has illustrated field guides, and in his early life he spent half the year as a guide in Alaska and then the other half as an artist – 15 years straight undertaking that lifestyle. He’s an avid photographer and he has worked sculpting into his life – with works including the walrus that sticks out of the wall at Hatfield Marine Science Center.
When I went to college, I didn’t think I could make a living at it. I sent out dozens of portfolios to publishers and children’s book publishers. I was really naïve.
The introduction to art class at Cornell was a turning point in his pursuit: “The professor was basically trying to teach us how to be a snobby artist. I wasn’t going to have any part of that.”
Ram’s drive is to connect people to nature. He works mostly on commission, gigs assigned by Oregon State Parks, other agencies and publishers. His drawing avocation started when he was very young, and by age 14 he was designing dolls.
Questions abounded at his talk; he stated his interpretative panels follow the Rule of Threes –
It’s better to have less text. Over the years we went from textbooks on a stick to art pieces with no more than 300 words.
• three seconds to get the headlines
• 30 seconds to glance over the panel
• three minutes to read everything, including the captions
I ask him who his inspirations were. He rattles off Lars Jonsson and Robert Bateman. His number-one inspirator was a guy who wrote a book, Birds in Art. That was Larry McQueen, who ironically turned out to be living in Eugene where the young Ram lived. Ram saw his photo in the newspaper. It turned out Ram had been his paperboy from age 12 to 14. Ram introduced himself to McQueen and ever since he has been Ram’s inspiration.
Our Collective Potlatch
There are many challenges to our coast – to the livelihoods of the people who make money off our coast’s marine resources. There are challenges to scientists who have to spend more time stumping for grants. There are many silos of people who are gatekeepers of information but fail to abide by transparency. Tourism and sustainable economies are debated weekly in city council meetings.
Unfortunately, for many coastal people, the elephants in the room are global warming, ocean level rise and ocean acidification and hypoxia. I’ve written about researchers diving deep into those topics.
But the bandwidth of the American public, lawmakers and industry is taken up by the stumbling blocks to progress – profits at any cost and doing business as usual for the benefit of a few rich people and stockholders.
The state of the coast, as seen at the Salishan Resort, is one tied to vibrant thinkers and activists; scientists and researchers; explorers and dreamers.
On the surface, some things look hunky-dory, but when we peel back layers as both naturalists and scientists, we see a more varied and complicated picture. The State of the Coast is a multivariant symphony of sometimes syncopated and discordant arias.
Music is in the eye of the beholder, but for our coast, the people dedicated to learning and sharing are really the bedrock for the rest of us who find some niche or dream or hope in this place.
Maybe we need this sort of potlatch — the name given to most Northwest Coast celebrations – every month.
Imagine, State of the Coast as our potlatch, from the Nuu-chah-nulth “pachitle”’ (potlatch), which means “to give.” How much does the reader have to give to this vibrant and vulnerable coast? How much do you have at stake in ensuring future generations have a healthy coast?
Paul Haeder, Author 