Author: floydma

Categories
Earth Healthy Planet

Run Silent, Run Deep

For more than half a century, oceanographers have ventured out of Newport to measure, probe and monitor the Pacific Ocean off the central Oregon Coast. And since the 1950s, these seafaring researchers have recorded about 4,000 “profiles” of the near-shore waters — surface to bottom measurements of temperature, salinity and oxygen levels that begin to tell us how the world’s largest ocean influences everything from our weather to fisheries.

Categories
Healthy Economy Healthy Planet Stewardship

Smooth Sailing

Aft deck at sunrise (Photo: Kim Kenny)

For the past decade, Oregon State University has boasted an oceanography program ranked among the top five in the nation, and its broad spectrum of marine and coastal research has an international reputation that few institutions can match.

Categories
Healthy Economy Healthy Planet Stewardship

Once and Future King

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were early witnesses to the majesty that is the salmon in the Pacific Northwest. When the explorers first came upon the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers, they observed a scene that was both confusing and awe-inspiring.

Categories
Earth Healthy Planet Marine Studies Initiative

Acid Ocean

Water that upwells seasonally along the West Coast of North America is growing increasingly acidic, according to a survey conducted in 2007 by an international team of scientists. In June, they reported finding acidified ocean water within 20 miles of the shoreline, raising concern for marine ecosystems from Canada to Mexico.

Categories
Healthy Planet Marine Studies Initiative

Out of the Depths

It was like a scene from a grade-B horror film. On a gently rocking vessel in the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez, a young oceanographer earnestly watches her computer screen while colleagues lower a cable into the water.

Categories
Earth Healthy Planet

Winds of Change

In his 32 years as a crab fisherman off the central Oregon coast, Al Pazar has pulled up a lot of strange things in his pots: wolf eels, skates, huge starfish, fossilized rocks, octopi, fish that rarely stray south of Alaska, and others that prefer the warm subtropical waters off Mexico. But until July 2002, he had never yanked up a pot full of dead Dungeness crabs.