Oregon Sea Grant

Healthy ocean, healthy people

Human health and safety are inextricably linked to the health of our ocean and coastal ecosystems, which provide benefits such as clean water, seafood, marine-derived pharmaceuticals, and recreational opportunities. Safety is also important, particularly for recreational users and commercial fishermen. Conversely, threats to ocean and coastal health, such as harmful algal blooms, pollution, aquatic invasive species, and fish disease, can increase risks to humans who use and rely on coastal and ocean resources.

Oregon Sea Grant supports research that adds to our knowledge of biophysical processes that drive ecological conditions affecting human health and safety, improving forecasting of those conditions and developing and improving public notification and response strategies. From that base, we hope to develop methods of forecasting threats, with an emphasis on early warning systems and reduced human risk. We support ocean exploration and research into natural marine substances that can help fight disease and improve human health. We use our extension and communications  capabilities to teach people about ocean-related hazards and risks, and also help them understand their own impacts on the ocean health and water quality.

Tackling Aquatic invasive species

Contacts: Sam Chan, Tania Siemens

Plants and animals have adapted over centuries to the habitats and conditions where they originate. And for just as long, humankind has been moving those organisms to new homes - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Not all introduced species are invasive. When an introduced species is bigger, tougher, hungrier or faster-growing than others in its new home, it can crowd them out, wreak havoc on entire ecosystems and threaten human health. Oregon Sea Grant works to teach diverse audiences - from school-children to recreational boaters to government entities and the news media - about the risks marine invaders can pose to native animals, plants and ecosystems. We provide practical tools for identifying, reporting, controlling and mitigating marine invasions without causing further damage to the ecosystems they threaten. Read more ...

Keeping fishermen safe at sea

Contact: Kaety Hildenbrand

Commercial Dungeness crab fishing is one of the deadliest professions, and one that is vital to Oregon's coastal economy. Over the past decade, Oregon Sea Grant has partnered with the US Coast Guard to train more than 500 fishermen in such life-saving skills as firefighting, flare use, how to quickly don immersion suits and abandon-ship exercises. Fishermen are putting those lessons to work in real-life emergencies, and saving lives. Read more ...

Seeking new drugs from the deeps

Contact: Mark Zabriskie

The ocean is home to a multitude of life forms with complex biological properties - multiple varieties of algae, microbes that colonize in thick, living mats on the deep-sea floor. Some of these plants and animals have developed unique, protective biochemistry to help them survive in harsh, predator-filled marine environments. Since the 1980s, Oregon Sea Grant has supported the work of researchers studying  these organisms as potential sources of new drugs that could be used in the fight against cancer and other human disease. Current research is looking deeper than ever before, at unusual microbes that cluster around hydrothermal vents in the ocean deeps. Read more ...

Understanding fish disease

Contact: Jerri Bartholomew

Northwest salmon populations face many threats, and perhaps none are more confounding than a tiny parasite, Ceratomyxa shasta. At OSU's John L. Fryer Fish Disease Lab, resesarcher Jerri Bartholomew has spent years unraveling the mystery of these organisms, and how they infect and kill salmon. Her current Sea Grant research focuses on the connection between parasitic outbreaks and fluctuations in water level and flow in the rivers where salmon spend half their lives. What she's learning could have implications for salmon survival in a changing climate. Read more ...

Related Research

• Bioactive Natural Products from Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vent Organisms (R/BT-48). Mark Zabriskie, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy.

Learn more ...

Publications and videos:

• Beach Safety
• Fish Disease
• Harmful Algal Blooms
• Invasive Species
• Seafood Safety

See also:

• Coastal Hazards & Climate Change
• Fisheries & Seafood
• Watersheds & Water Resources
• Invaders from the Deep (Oregon's Agricultural Progress, Fall 2006)
• Genetically Pinpointing Pollution Sources (Oregon's Agricultural Progress, Fall 2006)