Terra

Underwater exploration to be streamed online this summer

An underwater robotics competition in North Bend, teacher workshops in Newport, a student-built unmanned sailboat in Astoria — all reflect an ambitious educational initiative known as the Oregon Coast STEM Hub.

Oregon State professor Bruce Menge and graduate student Elizabeth Cerny-Chipman investigate an epidemic of sea star wasting disease at Seal Rock.

Jessica Luo and Kelly Robinson are jelly lovers — not the jellies you smear on your toast but the ones that float in the ocean, their bell-shaped bodies pulsing like slow-motion heartbeats in the currents of the sea.

They float in the ocean by the billions, these wandering animals whose Greek name means “drifter.” Most are smaller than a pinpoint, their adaptive peculiarities (whip-like propellers, bug-like antennae, hair-like fringes for foraging on algae) visible only under a microscope.

OSU scientists were astounded recently when they listened to recordings of an iceberg that had formed in Antarctica, floated into the open ocean, and eventually melted and broke apart. Scientists have dubbed this phenomenon an “icequake.”