Fisheries & Seafood

Fishing vessels at dock in Newport

Fisheries and fishing communities under stress

Oregon’s coastal history, culture, and economy are shaped by our productive fisheries. Increasingly, these fisheries are challenged by forces of change, ranging from harvest practices and regulation to pressures on climate, economy and resources.

Sea Grant integrates the tools of extension, education, research and communication to improve understanding and management of fishing and aquaculture practices that support sustainable, commercially valuable fish stocks and ecosystems. We support research that focuses on understading relationships between habitat, climate, food and all the other forces that come to play in marine ecosystems.

Sea Grant also works with fishermen and seafood processors to develop new products, enhance food safety and handling, and advance consumer awareness so they can make healthy and sustainable choices about the seafood they consume.

Seafood consumer education

Sea Grant has long been an innovator in seafood consumer education, from teaching people how to safely harvest, buy and prepare seafood to educating them about the health benefits - and occasional risks - of eating seafood. Today, we're exploring new technologies to connect consumers to the source of the seafood they buy, and to help them make educated choices about sustainable seafood. Read more ...

Seafood product innovation

Oregon Sea Grant's Mark Whitham and the OSU Seafood Consumer Center in Astoria work to assist businesses in developing new products using heat to cook and seal fish in a flexible package. A pilot processing plant at OSU’s Seafood Lab offers hands-on training in retort packaging techniques. As a result, Oregon producers are now selling several new products in restaurants and through national grocery chains. Read more ...

Sustainable aquaculture

Oregon's aquaculture industry is focused on shellfish, and particularly on restoring harvestable populations of native oysters from declining levels caused by pollution, overfishing and ocean conditions. We support research into fish and shellfish disease, help develop new methods of breeding and feeding commercial shellfish, and also work with the multimillion-dollar ornamental fish industry to control disease and improve industry breeding and importation practices. Read more ...

Related Research

Current projects:

Predicting Habitat Quality of Juvenile English Sole and Dungeness Crab in Coastal And Estuarine Nursery Grounds (R/ECO-5). Lorenzo Ciannelli, OSU CEOAS.
Taking Stock of Oregon’s Nearshore Fisheries: Development of Simple Assessment Tools for Better Management (R/RCF-30). Selina Heppell, OSU Fisheries & Wildlife.
Geomagnetic Imprinting and Homing in Salmon and Steelhead (R/RCF-31). David Noakes, OSU Fisheries & Wildlife.

2010-2012 projects:

Drivers Of Ecosystem Resilience: Toward A Predictive Understanding Of Hypoxia's Impacts On Nearshore Fisheries And Ecological Communities (R/ECO-24). Francis Chan, Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO)/Oregon State University Department of Zoology
A cooperative effort to track the Humboldt squid invasion in Oregon (R/RCF-29). Selina Heppell, Oregon State University Department of Fisheries & Wildlife
Effect of Vibrio tubiashii on West Coast shellfish (R/SAQ-16). Chris Langdon, Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Science Center/Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station
Effects of Hypoxia on Ichthyoplankton and Micronekton Communities off the Oregon Coast (R/ECO-23). Lorenzo Ciannelli, Oregon State University College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (continuing project from 2008-2010 funding cycle).

Oregon Sea Grant

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