Sea Grant News

Social Researchers Grapple with Climate Communication Challenges

(Corvallis, Ore.) April 14, 2008 - Presidential hopefuls and policy-makers across the political spectrum seem to have absorbed the news that the changing global climate is a cause for serious concern and action.

But communicating successfully with the American public about the issue is still very much a work in progress.
This view emerges from a series of extended interviews with social scientists who specialize in climate communications. The interviews are captured in a series of podcasts produced by Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University (OSU). The podcasts, Communicating Climate Change, are online here.

The interviews, conducted between November and March by Sea Grant’s assistant director, Joe Cone, reveal what leading researchers know about the American public’s response to global warming and, more broadly, climate change.

“People are convinced that climate change is here,” said Susanne Moser, of the Institute for the Study of Society and Environment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). But “people don't know a lot about the solutions,” she added. “They feel quite disillusioned or pessimistic that their little action will address this global overwhelming problem.”

A recent survey teased apart the notions about threat and response. That survey, by the Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication Research at George Mason University, found the 12,000 adult American respondents split into two major camps. About 40 percent, said Ed Maibach, director of the center, “perceived a lot of danger associated with global warming, and they had a high sense of self-efficacy,” a belief they can take constructive action.
However, a second 40 percent of respondents “had a low sense of global warming as a threat and a low sense of efficacy associated with our ability to address it.”

“This tells me,” said Maibach, “that we need to put a significant amount of effort into understanding the worldview of those people who don’t sense a threat and who don't feel that there's much we can do about it. Is it the lack of threat that makes the self-efficacy question irrelevant in their minds? Or are these independent assessments in their minds and we need to address both?”

The social scientists interviewed were all keenly aware of the complexity and high stakes involved in communicating about climate change.

“Climate change just raises so many issues, from individual behavior to policy elements,” said Caron Chess, a human ecologist at Rutgers University. “It has very complex science behind it. It has long-term effects, but we need to have some fairly short-term behavior changes. You name just about any communication problem and climate change has it.”

Baruch Fischhoff, a Carnegie Mellon University expert in risk analysis and decision-making, noted that “climate change really is of a scale that it's hard for people to get their minds around; in a way, it’s like the entrance of a life-threatening illness into somebody's life.”

But while individuals who confront such an illness can talk to others who've had the same thing happen to them, “people haven't lived in a world with the kind of destabilization that's possible with climate change,” he said.

“In terms of the scope and the complexity of the potential consequences and their irreversibility,” Fischhoff said, “you might think of it as having the sum of the properties of a threat from a nuclear war during the worst part of the Cold War. We didn't know what the levers were and if things got out of control, there would be, in effect, unimaginable changes.”

If such an analysis sounds scary, the researchers said it’s important that information presented to the public not shy away from describing the genuine threats to be expected from global warming.

“I actually don't think we should be backing off fear messages,” said Maibach of George Mason. “But I think, at the same time, we can't only be communicating fear, communicating things that worry people about climate change. We also have to be very, very aggressive in communicating solutions.”

While individuals may hear such solutions and take steps to reduce their carbon “footprint,” Maibach acknowledged the importance of instilling a sense of collective involvement in the solutions.

“It's all well and good if I believe in my own abilities, but if I believe that the society, of which I am a member, does not have the wherewithal to succeed,” Maibach said, “it's fairly certain that my own personal efforts or my motivation to engage in personal efforts will wane before too terribly long.

“So, I would suggest that one of the things we need to work on is building our sense of collective efficacy; this is, in fact, a problem that we in the United States are perfectly capable of solving.”

“We need to give people a vision of what’s worth fighting for,” said Moser of NCAR.

She expects a warming of four to five degrees Fahrenheit, which would be a “hugely different world than what we have lived in in the past. For anyone living today, they're going to see degradation rather than improvement in the climate.”

As reported in February, new model simulations of long-term global warming suggest that even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, the planet will continue to get warmer for 100 to 200 years. These simulations were described by Oregon State University oceanographer, and lead author, Andreas Schmittner in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Because of an expected continued increase in global warming, Moser said climate communicators “need to show people the right indicators of change, which are going to be social-change indicators, not environmental-change indicators.”

Moser challenges people to develop a compelling vision of a “beautiful, communal, peaceful way of living with each other” in which modern conveniences would not necessarily be forgone but there would be “very different ways of achieving them.” And she argued the need for a public discussion of some fundamental questions such a vision would entail. “What does it mean to be a community, a society, in a world that has twice as much CO2 and is five degrees warmer than what we had?” she asked in her interview.

“I think those are the kinds of questions that tap into our deeper motivations for change, our creativity, and into what we really want. I don't think we can get to anything better if we don't begin even saying what we really want.”

A positive vision of the future includes the necessary transformation of “the entire global economy to a non-carbon future,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. “That is an enormous task, and yet it presents enormous profitable opportunities.”

“That's why some of the world's largest companies are scrambling and moving very fast and investing literally billions of dollars into trying to find those solutions,” said Leiserowitz. “That's ultimately what we're going to have to do.”

As a specialist in risk perception and communication, the Yale researcher argued that the challenge in communicating a significantly changing climate to the public involves understanding the way individuals interpret unfamiliar risks.

“In most cases, for most hazards that we deal with, people's actual factual knowledge about them is relatively limited,” he said. “If you're trying to educate people about a hazard, then it's obviously very important that you understand what they currently understand about that hazard. And that isn't just simply the knowledge that they have about that hazard, but how they feel about that hazard.”

Successful communication about the climate crisis will require “translating” climate science, said Leiserowitz, “in a way that it appeals to the emotions, to the things that we feel and care about that engages people, that motivates people. Cold facts don't motivate people.”

Maibach echoed that sentiment. “Most of us haven't yet made that connection to the fact that global warming is a threat to us here. I don't exactly know what it is that we're missing and how to present that information to make that connection in people's minds. But I do believe that's one of the connections we need to make: that climate change, global warming, is in fact a threat to the people you love and to the places you love.”

[Note to editors: The complete audio interviews as well as text transcripts for all the social scientists cited in the article are online.]

Public Invited to Preview OPB film, learn about invasive species

Corvallis, OR. (April 1, 2008) - Scotch broom, Japanese eelgrass, Quagga mussels, and Oregonians: How are they related? While the first three are non-native, invasive species of plants and animals, Oregonians often unknowingly spread these and a growing number of other invaders in the state -- and can also stop invasive species before they spread.

A statewide educational effort to prevent the spread of invasive species ramps up this month, highlighted by a media campaign whose centerpiece is a new documentary film produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting. The hour-long documentary, "The Silent Invasion," has its OPB broadcast premiere on Earth Day, April 22 at 8 p.m. -- but because of faculty involvement in the production, Oregon State University (OSU) will host special advanced screenings, Wednesday, April 9, in Corvallis, and Thursday, April 17, in Newport. The public is invited.

The Corvallis special event begins at 5 p.m. with a reception and refreshments, followed by an introduction to the film, and then the showing itself at 5:30. Time for discussion follows. All Corvallis events are at the CH2MHill Alumni Center on the campus, across from Reser football stadium.

The Newport screening is at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, in the public auditorium within the Visitor Center, starting at 6 p.m.

Copies of a new guidebook published by Oregon Sea Grant, "On the Lookout for Aquatic Invasive Species," will be available in limited quantities for free. Oregon Sea Grant leads public education activities in Oregon related to aquatic invasives.

Oregon Sea Grant faculty at OSU have been playing a critical role in the development of the media campaign. Sam Chan, Sea Grant Extension invasive species specialist, is part of a team of advisors to OPB's Oregon Field Guide production crew, led by producer Ed Jahn. Chan arranged for the OPB crew to be invited along on an exploratory research visit to China last year, and that experience of the interconnected global nature of the invasives problem and potential solutions figures prominently in the OPB documentary. Chan represents Oregon Sea Grant on the state's Oregon Invasive Species Council, which is another key partner in the public education campaign. Chan and Jahn will be the main presenters at the Corvallis screening.

At the same time, Chan and other Sea Grant colleagues have been conducting social science research to guide the development of the campaign." Focus group" interviews were conducted with several groups whose activities impinge on invasive species, including boaters, hunters and gardeners. And Sea Grant has also supported the development of a statewide public opinion survey with the Oregon Invasive Species Council about invasives, led by Sea Grant professor of free-choice learning, Lynn Dierking, Chan, and communications leader Joe Cone.

In addition to the new identification field guide," On the Lookout for Aquatic Invaders," which will be available at the April 9 screening, Sea Grant's own award-winning documentary about aquatic invasive species," You Ought to Tell Somebody!" is online.

Along with its feature documentary, OPB has planned a year-long campaign called "Stop the Invasion" to counter the environmental and economic threat of invasive species. The campaign will also include a series of television awareness spots, an online invasive species 'reporting' hotline, a" GardenSmart Oregon "guide to non-invasive plants for your garden, a statewide volunteer Take Action calendar, and other educational materials aimed at giving Oregonians the resources they need to join the fight to protect Oregon's natural environment. Other participants in the educational campaign include SOLV, the Nature Conservancy, the Oregon Invasive Species Council, the City of Portland, and Portland State University

Sea Grant to Deliver Marine Reserves Comments to State Advisors

CORVALLIS, Ore. (March 21, 2008) - A fast-track" listening and learning" process that drew nearly 800 people to meetings on Oregon's coast has produced more than 1,700 separate comments on the question of establishing marine reserves in the state's territorial waters.

The comments are due for delivery next week to the state's Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC), which will use them to help formulate recommendations for addressing Gov. Ted Kulongoski's goal of creating a limited number of marine reserves – areas of the near-shore sea where fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited - off the Oregon coast.

NOTE: The full report is now available on line.

Oregon Sea Grant, a marine research and outreach program based at Oregon State University (OSU), was asked by OPAC to come up with an objective process for presenting information about marine reserves to, and collecting comments from, coastal residents, businesses and interest groups to aid in the council's policy development. The OSU program was given just six weeks to complete the task.

"They came to us because we've done this kind of thing before," said Flaxen Conway, Sea Grant Extension community outreach specialist who has spent most of her career working with fishing and timber communities on issues related to changing natural-resource economies. The program has a 40-year record of bringing objective methods and processes to discussions of sometimes controversial public policy concerning the ocean and coast.

Conway helped design the outreach effort conducted by Ginny Goblirsch, a veteran Sea Grant Extension agent who was brought out of retirement to help with the project, and Jeff Feldner, Sea Grant Extension fisheries and seafood technology educator. Assisting with technical presentations were Patty Burke, Marine Resources Program Manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Selena Heppell, an associate professor with the OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Within days after Sea Grant agreed to handle the OPAC outreach effort, Goblirsch and Feldner were traveling up and down the coast talking with "all different types of people" - local government leaders, fishermen, conservationists – to come up with strategies for getting the public involved in a process with such short lead time.

"We asked local people to help us plan the forums so that local expectations could be met," said Goblirsch. "The main concern was that people wanted to know more about the (marine reserves) process, and they needed to feel confident that their views and suggestions would be incorporated into it. People wanted to be heard."

To ensure that all perspectives and interests got a fair shake, the Sea Grant team designed a strict protocol for the way the meetings would be conducted, and how information would be gathered.

"You design meetings based on what you want to get out of them," said Conway. "I think some people came to ours expecting to be able to stand up to a microphone and speak their minds. The problem with that approach is that those who speak the longest and loudest get heard, but a lot of people won't even pick up the mic. We wanted to make sure everyone's voice got heard, and all their comments were collected and given equal weight."

To do that, the organizers developed five questions that would be asked in each of eight community meetings:

1. What community impacts (cultural, social and economic) should be considered when proposing a marine reserve?

2. How can marine reserves benefit, not disrupt, existing economic and recreational uses of the ocean?

3. What do communities need in order to be adequately involved in providing recommendations to OPAC for marine reserves?

4. One of the reasons cited for establishing marine reserves is the need to create areas of refuge so we can learn more about our nearshore resources including fish stocks and habitat. What types of research are needed to better protect and manage our nearshore?

5. Are there specific attributes (unique circumstances, places, things) about this region's section of the coast (shore to three miles) that would work or not work for siting a marine reserve?

The questions were posed in February to the 755 people who turned out for meetings in North Bend, Garibaldi, Newport, Florence, Reedsport, Harbor, Port Orford and Warrenton. At each meeting, participants got a short briefing on the history and science of marine reserves – what they are and why they're being considered in Oregon. They were given information about how they could stay involved and informed during the state's decision-making process. They spent the rest of the meetings writing down responses to the five questions, plus general comments on the subject.

In all, the team got back 1,689 comment cards; some people also handed in prepared comments they'd brought to the meetings, and still more arrived by e-mail. The formal comment period ended on March 14.

Back on campus, a group of students was brought on board in early March to enter all comments, in their entirety, into a database that will become part of the outreach report to OPAC.

"We've got the comments organized by question and by place," Conway said. "That will help give the council a sense of both the similarities and differences of opinion in different communities ... Beyond that, and some thematic grouping, we're not doing a lot of analysis or summarizing. That's not our job – the idea isn't for us to do the analysis, it's to get this information to OPAC and have them go through it in detail and use it to make their decisions."

Sea Grant is due to deliver the outreach report at the March 27 and 28 OPAC meetings in Newport. The full text of the report, including all public comments, is expected to be made publicly available on the Sea Grant web site by Tuesday, March 25, when OPAC is scheduled to meet. More information can be found on Sea Grant's marine reserves outreach page and on the official state marine reserves site at www.oregonmarinereserves.net.

New Sea Grant publication explores low impact development

Corvallis, OR (March 4, 2008) - Many Oregon communities are facing rapid population growth and increases in housing and industrial construction, without a matching increase in the resources necessary to manage such growth and make wise land use decisions. One result may be added stress from increased stormwater runoff on already overtaxed water management systems.

To help communities address such issues, Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University (OSU) has published Barriers and Opportunities for Low Impact Development: Case Studies from Three Oregon Communities.

Written by OSU Extension faculty Derek Godwin, Frank Burris and Sam Chan, with Betsy Parry and Amanda Punton, the booklet examines some of the challenges of managing growth for the lowest possible impact in residential, commercial and industrial construction, and offers suggestions for meeting those challenges in environmentally and economically sustainable ways.

The 24-page booklet is the result of workshops conducted by Oregon Sea Grant's watershed education program in Portland, Grants Pass and Brookings to determine what these communities need to better protect their natural resources while accommodating growth.

Lead author Derek Godwin says that one of the biggest challenges in land use development is managing stormwater." The goal is to limit impervious areas, compacted soils, and storm-drainage pipe collection systems in housing and industrial development," Godwin says." Instead, we need to try to mimic how water moves through a well-vegetated landscape."

Copies of the full-color publication may be purchased for $3 each plus $3 shipping and handling from Sea Grant Communications, 541-737-4849. It is also available online at http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs.html.

For more information about the booklet or low impact development, contact Derek Godwin at derek.godwin@oregonstate.edu or 503-566-2909.

Interviews set for Sea Grant director candidates

Corvallis, OR (Feb. 14, 2008) - Marine researchers and other interested parties are invited to sit in on public presentations by four finalists for the position of Oregon Sea Grant director at Oregon State University (OSU) between now and early April.

Finalists were drawn from a nation-wide search for a successor to Dr. Robert Malouf, who is retiring after nearly 17 years at the helm of the OSU-based marine research, outreach and education program.

Each of the four candidates will spend two days in interviews and public presentations. On the first day, each will give a presentation to discuss his or her five-year vision for Sea Grant. The presentations, including question-and-answer sessions, will take place the OSU campus in Corvallis, and transmitted via polycom to the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

On the second day of their visits, the candidates will travel to the HMSC for technical presentations. The HMSC seminars will be transmitted to the campus. Both presentations will be recorded.

In addition, each candidate will take part in an open forum at each location to meet people and take questions. All sessions are open to university students, faculty and staff and other interested parties.

The candidates are:

• Dr. Michael Harte, a professor in the OSU College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU, director of the college's Marine Resource Management Program and an Oregon Sea Grant Extension specialist since
• Dr. James Berkson, associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, and program leader for the Recruiting, Training and Research Unit at Virginia Tech, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service in Blacksburg.
• Dr. Stephen Brandt, director of the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Ann Arbor, MI. He holds adjunct Professorships at the School of Natural Resources and in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan. At GLERL, he created and directs the multi-institutional Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health.
• Dr. Patricia Burke, manager of the Marine Resources Program for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) since 2002 and ODFW representative on the Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory Council in the Governor's marine cabinet. Dr. Burke has taught Natural Resource Policy at the University of Minnesota, and directed natural resource programs for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Questions about the candidate selection process may be directed to rich.holdren@oregonstate.edu

Now in its 40th year, Oregon Sea Grant is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Sea Grant College Program. OSG distributes more than $2 million biennially in NOAA research funds to Oregon scientists through a highly competitive grants program, and conducts marine outreach via a network of Sea Grant Extension specialists, on campus and in communities along the Oregon coast. Sea Grant also produces a wide range of publications and videos on ocean and coastal topics, and manages and conducts marine education at the HMSC Visitor Center in Newport.

Marine Reserves meetings scheduled for Oregon coast

CORVALLIS, OR. (Feb. 8, 2008) - A series of" listening and learning" forums in eight communities up and down the Oregon Coast this month will gather a wide range of interests and viewpoints to explore the issue of marine reserves.

The forums, starting in North Bend on Feb. 18, are being organized by Oregon Sea Grant, the Oregon State University-based marine research and outreach program, at the request of the state's Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC).

As defined by OPAC, marine reserves are areas of the ocean closed to fishing and other extractive activities in order to conserve marine habitats and biodiversity to provide reference areas for research and monitoring. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has asked OPAC to come up with a set of recommendations for establishing" less than 10 marine reserves -- large enough for scientific testing but small enough to avoid economic or social impacts such as the loss of significant fishing opportunities."

OPAC members asked Sea Grant to conduct the community outreach process because of the program's 40-year history of engaging with coastal communities on issues as wide-ranging as fisheries management, coastal hazards and regional research planning.

The forums are intended to engage coastal communities and ocean users, share scientific and local knowledge, and show people how they can continue to be involved in the process of nominating potential sites for marine reserves.

Forums will be moderated by Ginny Goblirsch, a long-time Sea Grant Extension Agent with both professional and personal background in the fishing community. Goblirsch, who lives in Newport, was brought out of retirement to coordinate the outreach effort.

Scientific background on marine reserves will be presented by Dr. Patty Burke, Marine Resources Manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Dr. Selina Heppell, a faculty researcher with the OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Participants will hear" what and why" background about marine reserves, receive copies of material OPAC intends to use to make its recommendations, and meet others with whom they may continue working on the issue after the forums.

Targeted participants include:

• Commercial, charter, and recreational fishermen
• Seafood industry and fishing support services
• Port commissioners and managers
• Community conservation leaders
• Coastal recreation interests
• Local government and staff
• The public at large

Those planning to attend the two-hour forums are encouraged to prepare in advance by visiting http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/outreach/reserves.html and reading the background documents provided there by OPAC. Print versions of the documents will also be available at the offices of local ports.

To ensure that their knowledge, ideas and perspectives are considered in the decision-making process, participants are also urged to bring written comments to turn in at the forums.

All forums will take place from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the following dates and places:

• Feb. 18 - North Bend Community Center, 2222 Broadway, North Bend
• Feb. 20. - Garibaldi City Hall, 107 6th St., Garibaldi
• Feb. 21 - Newport City Hall, 169 SW Coast Hwy, Newport
• Feb. 22 - Florence Events Center, 715 Quince St., Florence
• Feb. 26 - Port of Umpqua, 364 N 4th St., Reedsport
• Feb. 27 - Chetco Grange Community Center, 97895 Shopping Center Ave, Harbor
• Feb. 28 - Port Orford City Hall, 555 W 20th, Port Orford
• Feb. 29 - Warrenton Community Center, 170 SW 3rd St, Warrenton

Residents of surrounding communities are encouraged to attend the forum nearest to them.

Sea Grant is under a mid-March OPAC deadline to conduct these and other listening and engagement activities and deliver an interim outreach report to the Governor, OPAC, and state agencies involved in the marine reserves process. One possible outcome could be the formation of local nearshore working groups to further study the issue and, if they choose, nominate areas in their regions as potential marine reserves.

For more information, contact Ginny Goblirsch at 541-737-8002, or by e-mail to marinereserves@oregonstate.edu

Oregon Sea Grant, based at OSU, is a marine research and outreach program organized under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Sea Grant College Program.

Oregon Sea Grant Director Malouf Announces Retirement

CORVALLIS, Ore. (Aug. 30, 2007) – Oregon Sea Grant director Robert E. Malouf has announced his retirement after 16 years leading the marine research, outreach, and education program based at Oregon State University.

Malouf has had overall responsibility for all of Sea Grant's activities, including its competitive grants, the visitor center of the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, and active programs in communication, education and extension. Oregon Sea Grant employs more than 40 people on a budget that exceeds $5 million in state and federal funds annually.

The national recruitment and selection process for Malouf's successor has recently begun, said John Cassady, OSU vice president for research.

Malouf, a native of Montana, began his affiliation with Oregon Sea Grant in the program's first year, 1968, when he received support as a new OSU master's student in fisheries. After earning his Ph.D. in fisheries from Oregon State he joined the faculty of the Marine Sciences Research Center of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. While there from 1977 to 1991 he taught courses in marine fisheries, shellfisheries, and aquaculture. In 1987 he was named director of the New York Sea Grant Institute; he held that position until he succeeded Oregon Sea Grant's original director, William Wick, on Wick's retirement in 1991.

Under Malouf's leadership, Oregon Sea Grant has been consistently ranked as the best Sea Grant program in the nation in formal reviews.

The national review panel cited the program as demonstrating several national "best management practices," including strategic planning, decision-making, and program integration, all articulated and developed by Malouf.

For more than 10 years Malouf served as a member of Oregon's Ocean Policy Advisory Council and chaired the council's Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. He has had numerous leadership positions with other state and national organizations.

Climate Outreach Project Funded

Oregon Sea Grant and Maine Sea Grant have been awarded special funding to help coastal communities prepare for climate change. The two-year, $290,000 grant is from the Sectoral Applications Research Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Leading the project is Joe Cone, assistant director of Oregon Sea Grant. Susan White, Maine Sea Grant associate director, is project co-PI. The project aims to develop and test a model of public outreach about climate change that would be made available to all the members of the national Sea Grant network.

Oregon and Maine have both similarities and differences with respect to anticipated climate change effects and the communities and economic interests that will likely be most affected. As a result, collaboration and complementary outreach efforts between the two states are expected to yield insights about critical information needs and effective outreach strategies that may be applicable to other states.

Outreach in Oregon and Maine will be directed toward and involve public and private decision makers such as city managers, county planners, private developers, bankers, and realtors. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews will be used to determine information needs and strategies. Advisory committees representative of the intended audiences have been formed.

While climate change is grabbing public attention and will be a focus of the project, shorter-term climate variability, over years and decades, is already having and will continue to have an impact on the physical features and habitats of coastal zones. These impacts are worsened by increased development and use of the coast, particularly in low-lying, hazard-prone areas. One premise of the project is that decision makers and residents need to better understand the challenges of adapting to climate variability locally in order to lessen its effects and make their communities more resilient.

Sea Grant Extension faculty will build upon their historic and close ties with coastal communities to lead the outreach efforts. Oregon Sea Grant Extension faculty involved are Patrick Corcoran, Michael Harte, and Shawn Rowe. Nathan Mantua of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group is part of the Oregon team. The Maine Sea Grant team includes Extension faculty Esperanza Stancioff and associate Kristen Whiting-Grant.

Invasion of New Beach Grass Could Weaken Shoreline Protection

CORVALLIS, Ore. (Sept. 12, 2007)- An invasion of American beach grass is under way along the Oregon coast, threatening to change dune ecology and reduce the ability of dunes to protect roads, property and towns from coastal storms.

Sea Grant-funded scientists at Oregon State University have documented a slow but steady takeover by this beach grass, an invasive species. They found that protective" foredunes" covered by the new grass species are only about half as high as those created by the European species of grass that were formerly dominant.

This phenomenon has already occurred from Long Beach, Wash., to Pacific City, Ore., and is continuing to spread, the researchers say.

"This decrease in dune height may translate into a significant decrease in coastal protection from storms and tsunamis," said Eric Seabloom, an OSU assistant professor of zoology.

In continuing studies, scientists plan to use oceanographic models to show just how much protection is lost when European beach grass is replaced by American beach grass.

The European grass – also an invasive species – has been dominant since it was first introduced to the area around the turn of the 20th century, to help stabilize blowing sand on the coast.

"It did its job extremely well," said Sally Hacker, an OSU associate professor of zoology and expert on marine and estuarine communities. "Without it, the sand would cover towns and roads."

The European beach grass did so well that by the 1930s it had spread along the entire Oregon coast, and created an extensive" foredune" system, large protective sand hills found in front of almost every sandy beach in Oregon. These dunes can provide significant protection for homes, roads, towns and other infrastructure, and serve as a barrier against flooding during major storm surges and perhaps even tsunamis.

But the second invasion by the American beach grass species had gone practically undetected. Introduced near the mouth of the Columbia River in the mid-1930s, also to stabilize beaches, American beach grass tends to out-compete its European cousin. The status of this beach grass variety went unnoticed for more than 50 years, until Seabloom and a colleague discovered it had crept as far south as Tillamook Head and as far north as the Olympic Peninsula.

Surveys of the entire Oregon coast have determined that the current range of domination of American beach grass extends from Long Beach, Wash., to Pacific City, Ore. But even beyond that, from Pacific City south, most of the beach grass is the American beach grass, with just a few pockets of European beach grass.

"Lower dune heights, increasing wave heights that have been observed over the last 50 years, and global climate change could create a scenario in which the dunes no longer serve a coastal protection function," Hacker said.

Beyond the protection concerns, there are other ecological issues in play as well.

While the foredune system created by European beach grass is good for coastal landowners, it is not so good for endangered beach plant species and the federally-threatened Western snowy plover, scientists say. As more sand accumulates in growing stands of beach grass, the land behind the dune tends to get "terrestrialized," or turned into wetlands and forest habitats.

"The willows and other trees and larger shrubs you often see behind the dunes are an indication that wetlands are being formed in the mini-valley behind the dunes," Hacker said.

As that process advances, beach habitat disappears, taking with it the plovers' critical nesting grounds. The southward march of the American beach grass species could reverse the terrestrialization trend, as the American variety creates a much smaller foredune.

Hacker and Seabloom have received funding from Oregon Sea Grant to study the impacts and interactions of these invasive grasses on the Oregon coast. They are also working with Peter Ruggiero, a geomorphologist in the Department of Geosciences at OSU, to understand the coastal protection capabilities of dunes along the coast.

Tiny Capsules May Help Boost Seafood Supply

Newport, Ore. (Aug. 24, 2007) - Oregon State University (OSU) professor Chris Langdon wants to help feed the world by using tiny beads.

The OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center researcher is building a better fish food for use in aquaculture, enclosing nutrients and medicines in microscopic beads in order to deliver them to animals ultimately destined for the dinner plate.

Feeding farmed fish and shellfish exactly what they eat in the wild, or other live food, while desirable, poses a number of problems." Live feed is often very expensive and of uneven quality," Langdon said.

It has long been observed, for example, that cultured fish tend to grow better when fed copepods, their natural prey, than when they are fed brine shrimp, the tiny shrimp-like animals that are commonly raised in aquaculture labs to feed to fish larvae." Live prey and microalgae culture require high labor costs, and algal cultures can crash, fueling bacterial blooms which can be trouble for the cultured species," he added.

Langdon discovered that while tiny capsules with walls made of fats, called microbeads, could contain nutrients well under most conditions, the payload – the amount of material that could be contained by the beads – was limited. That problem was solved by using a new technique that Langdon and his students and colleagues have been perfecting: the use of lipid spray beads.

Instead of being formed as a wall surrounding a core material, lipid spray beads consist of the material to be delivered bound with a matrix of lipid (fat). The beads are made by spraying a mixture of the lipid and core materials into a chamber containing liquid nitrogen, which essentially freezes and hardens the beads. The lipid Langdon uses most often is derived from menhaden, an abundant herring-like fish.

Lipid spray beads have been successful in encapsulating nutrients for feeding larval fish, shellfish, and live food for aquacultured species such as brine shrimp. By trying different combinations of lipid and payload, Langdon has been able to determine which lipid matrix material works best with each substance to be delivered.

"Chris has created particles that behave more like zooplankton than typical fish food, in that they can deliver nutrients without allowing their payload to leak out," said Langdon's colleague Dr. Michael Rust of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. "His breakthroughs are helping to address the major bottleneck of poor nutrition in rearing larval fish and other organisms."

With funding from Oregon Sea Grant, Langdon has also shown that lipid spray beads can successfully deliver medicines to larval fish, too, particularly the antibiotic oxytetracycline. "You can't inject a fish larva with antibiotics," Langdon pointed out, "and immersing the larvae in an antibiotic bath uses quite a lot of the drug." Another hurdle was that oxytetracycline, although approved for use for aquaculture, could not be used in marine settings because it is inactivated in seawater. Langdon and one of his students successfully developed a lipid spray bead that contained the antibiotic and delivered it to fish larvae while protecting it from seawater.

While Langdon has surmounted problems of nutrient delivery and bead digestibility, getting the microcapsules to disperse in water is still a challenge for his laboratory. The particles tend to clump when added to water because, as most school children know, oil and water do not mix. One solution he is exploring is to create more complex particles that coat the lipid beads with zein, a protein derived from corn.

As total human population increases worldwide, so too is the demand for foods from the sea. But there aren't enough wild stocks of fish and shellfish to meet the needs of the growing human population," Langdon said." Aquaculture is growing at a phenomenal rate of about 10% a year. Other countries, particularly China, are aggressively pursuing culture of a wide range of new species. Langdon's work will help support aquaculture growth in the U.S., especially for high quality food species, such as cod, that can be grown in pens offshore.

"In ten to twenty years' time I expect that a number of offshore aquaculture facilities will be located along the West Coast," he predicted. Langdon's research is laying the groundwork for that potential revolution. Rust agrees: "Chris's work addresses one of the ‘holy grails' of aquaculture," he said.