he scientists’ net is standard equipment in oceanography, but the microbes they catch are anything but ordinary. Gazing at them through a microscope is like visiting a zoo on another planet.
It may come like it did the last time, in the middle of a cold and blustery January night. Suddenly the ground will begin to shake, windows will shatter, bridges collapse, the electricity will go out and parents will frantically try to find a flashlight and dig sleepy kids out of bed, ignore everything else and run – because they know they only have minutes before the water arrives.
In his research on marine reserves, a graduate student taps his experience with both fish and humans.
With one of the largest concentrations of marine scientists in the nation, OSU’s ocean research has gone global.
Scott Baker, an Oregon State University conservation geneticist and cetacean specialist whose work was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary, “The Cove,” has been named one of four 2011 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation.
The colossal clamshells caught the young scientist’s eye soon after he arrived at Oregon State University in the late 1970s. Giant bivalves the size of footballs were piled in the corners of offices and cradled in the arms of researchers walking the halls of the School of Oceanography.