Our primary objective is to provide students with hands-on marine ecology research through student-devised experiments and long-term monitoring of abiotic and biotic conditions in Yaquina Bay, Oregon. Students will be part of the "Marine Team", a group problem-solving course that is offered by the PIs through the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. Requirements for the course include attendance at weekly seminars, help with monthly fish and plankton sampling in the Bay, design and execution of individual or group side projects, and outreach through public and university seminars and a summer teacher education course on estuarine ecology. The Team's monitoring project seeks to recreate a survey of fish and invertebrate distribution and abundance that was done by the EPA in 1967-68. Analysis of estuary conditions and variance in biota will be assessed at multiple temporal scales, with an emphasis on monitoring areas adjacent to restoration sites.
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Approach
There are two primary goals for this research project. First, We are establishing a regular survey to evaluate changes in the abundance and distribution of fishes in Yaquina Bay at multiple time scales: monthly, seasonally and annually. Second, we will compare our monthly results to an EPA survey performed in 1967 (De Ben et al., 1990), Which investigated changes in fish communities in response to temperature, tide and season. The successful completion of this goal will produce insight into how the biology and ecology of the Bay has changed over a long time-scale as well as within the duration of this study.
Research Tasks
With funding from Oregon Sea Grant, we have initiated several specific tasks to address our research objectives.
1. We have surveyed abundance, species composition, and size distribution
data of fish species within Yaquina Bay monthly since November 2002.
2. We are correlating data from these surveys with abiotic parameters, including
temperature, salinity, tide height, and weather conditions.
3. We will be able to compare our results with original data from the 1967 EPA
study.
4. We will statistically evaluate variance in fish abundance and distributions at
multiple temporal scales: monthly, seasonal, annual.
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Project impacts
This study serves as an opportunity for students within the natural sciences to experience field sampling, data collection, analysis, etc.
Due to our monthly sampling over a relatively long time period, our data will provide a time series that allows us to examine changes in fish abundance at multiple time scales. This information is critical for restoration planning and will also contribute to our understanding of how west coast estuaries serve as rearing habitat for juvenile fishes. We anticipate that the results will be of interest to a number of agency managers, scientists, and fishermen from around Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. In addition to publication of primary literature, we will present our results in a public forum in the Yaquina Bay area as well as on campus at Oregon State University.
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