Oregon State University master naturalist volunteers Anne Marie Farell-Matthews and Philip Matthews cut open sacks of native Olympia oysters and spread them on a muddy flat at Oregon's South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve near Charleston. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

COOS BAY – Lots of people fantasize about appearing on American Idol or Wheel of Fortune. But Oregon Field Guide? Not so much — that is, unless you happen to be Anne Farrell-Matthews and Philip Matthews. Whether they’re heaving bags of oysters around a sandbar or hauling groundwater monitors across a salt marsh, this pair of Oregon Master Naturalists could easily imagine OPB TV host Steve Amen showing up with a video crew. For the Coos Bay couple, joining in on ecosystem science and restoration is that glamorous.

So how is it that this hip couple in their 40s gets all excited about red tree voles, beaver scat and shimmy worms? Why would a general contractor and a graphic designer get up at 5 a.m. to wade around in the muck trying to save native oysters? Why would a pair of avid surfers forego great waves to study physical oceanography and the Cascadia Subduction Zone late into the night?

Partly because the South Slough runs through their veins. Philip tramped these mudflats and salt marshes relentlessly as a kid, his Irish setter Britta beside him. Anne came to Coos Bay later, at 19, from landlocked Denver where her bedroom walls had been plastered with whale posters. Finally, she felt like she could breathe. Together, they’ve explored every twist and tangle of the slough, which became the nation’s first national estuarine research reserve in the 1970s.

The other answer is more cerebral. It has to do with making amends and taking ownership. It has to do with helping to heal the landscape they love, a landscape that has been stressed by overharvesting, pollution and population growth over the past century and a half.

Philip’s motives are particularly personal. “I’m half French, half redneck,” he likes to joke. Describing his mom’s family, the French side of the clan, as “extreme environmentalists,” he hammers home his point by saying, “My uncle once chained himself to City Hall to protect shorebirds from hunters.” It’s his dad’s side for which he’s now making atonement. “My dad came from people who took advantage of the environment — poaching, fishing for salmon with dynamite, some pretty serious abuses of nature,” he explains. “I want to help offset some of the negative stuff.”

Turning the Tide

One August morning just as the sun is displacing the moon, Philip and Anne are skimming across the slough in a skiff with a team of scientists, students and volunteers, all Velcroed into brown neoprene chest waders and slip-proof boots. They set anchor at a spit called Younker Point. Footprints of shorebirds trace trails in the wet sand as the team, working fast against the tide, digs up bundle after bundle of oysters for transfer to a new location as part of a NOAA-funded project led by the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. Restoring native Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida) to the slough is the project’s long-term goal, and preliminary findings show that the oysters, transplanted from Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Tillamook, could survive and grow. But over time, excessive siltation turned out to be a problem at Younker Point, explains Dave Landkamer, an aquaculturist with Oregon Sea Grant, who’s helping with the oyster transfer.

“They’ve been suffocated in silt,” Landkamer says. “You can see by the ripples in the wet sand that there’s too much wave and tidal energy here for good oyster habitat. “
That’s why, after wrestling the mesh bags from the sand’s sucking grip, the team slings them into the skiff and another small boat for relocation. The morning sun is just cresting the treetops as the team speeds toward Long Island Point, a place where ancient shell middens are evidence of long-ago oyster beds. Alongshore, white egrets and blue herons stalk their prey. Cormorants circle overhead. Gulls cry out. A bald eagle rises from the pinnacle of a fir.

Out at the point, the team hurriedly stacks the bags to create a reef of oyster shells in hopes that the “Olys” will settle and spawn. This is just an early stage of longer-term studies. The National Estuarine Research Reserve Science Collaborative, which brings local stakeholders into its research process, is funding the next phase of the investigation. Someday, native oysters may once again be abundant in the South Slough.

Natural Mastery

As the team disembarks back at Charleston Bay’s boat basin, Philip’s face is smudged with mud. Anne is wet to the skin from the saltwater that “topped over” her waders. So it’s more than a little incongruous that their expressions fall somewhere between serenity and ecstasy. Clearly, getting sweaty, soggy and dirty is exactly what they signed up for when they chose to become Oregon Master Naturalists.

“I’m cold and I’m muddy,” Anne says with a huge grin. “And I had a great time!”

Then she adds reflectively: “Estuaries are the nurseries of the planet. If I can contribute in some tiny way to keeping them healthy, that’s what I want to do. After all, this is our own backyard.”

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Read more about Oregon Master Naturalists in Corps of Discovery.

In Florence, Oregon, Sandra Belson, the city's director of community development, links the health of the Siuslaw Estuary with the economy. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum, OSU Extension and Experiment Station Communications)

FLORENCE, Oregon – Several dozen people cluster under the Siuslaw River Bridge, colorfully zipped into fleece and Gore-Tex against the damp marine air. As a bitter wind tugs at their hats and mufflers, they listen to local planning officials tell stories of this place called Siuslaw Estuary. Once upon a time, these waters were home to millions of Coho salmon. That was before intensive fishing, farming and logging severely stressed the fragile ecosystem. Today, only a few thousand of the prized fish return each year to spawn in the streams and creeks draining the watershed.

“An estuary is where saltwater mixes with freshwater,” explains one of the guides, city engineer Dan Graber, as he gestures at the rain-swollen river racing toward the breakers just beyond the bridge. “It’s very important rearing habitat for the ocean-going salmonids.”

Sandra Belson, the city’s director of community development, elaborates. “It’s the nursery for all the sea creatures — not only for salmon, but for crabs and clams and for birdlife, too. Because of the mixing of seawater and freshwater, the estuarine ecosystem is very diverse.”

Partners in Protection

Just as biological diversity ensures productive habitat, so human diversity ensures productive environmental action. Belson and Graber, who led the fleece-bundled visitors that blustery day on the estuary, are members of the Siuslaw Estuary Partnership, a team representing nearly 20 government agencies, nonprofits, tribes and consulting firms wrapped under the mantle of watershed protection and restoration. In 2009, they won a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regenerate the watershed where the endangered Coho are struggling to survive.

“We had some contentious issues locally,” says Belson. “We realized that the driving force behind all of those issues was water: storm water, surface water, groundwater, seawater, freshwater. It’s all connected. Through this project, we’ve been able to get everybody together — to find common ground on a scientific basis.”

The estuary field trip was a highlight of the annual Heceta Head Coastal Conference, which the partnership co-sponsored with Oregon Sea Grant in October. Another of the partnership’s recent initiatives was a comprehensive climate change study. A thick report issued by the City of Florence in April traces the science of estuaries and posits the likely effects of planetary warming on Oregon’s coastal ecosystems and communities. The document draws heavily on the Oregon Climate Assessment Report, citing it more than 50 times.

At an open house in April, locals gathered to hear OCCRI scientists describe how global warming could alter Florence’s beaches, threaten its drinking water, damage its wetlands and tip the delicate balance of sea life in the already-troubled estuary. Getting out ahead of climate impacts is the community’s best hedge against ecological and economic adversity, the OCCRI experts counseled.

Stormy Weather

One mist-shrouded morning, Belson and Mike Miller, director of public works, sit in her City Hall office on Highway 101, where traffic kicks up a steady spray of rainwater. “To me, the biggest threat to our community is the frequency and intensity of storms,” says Belson, who first tackled climate issues as a Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa. “Bigger storms will mean stronger wave action and heavier runoff. Those forces will speed coastal erosion.”

Miller came to Florence from Bend, where the looming climate worry was dwindling snowpack. “The estuary is vulnerable because it’s so dynamic,” he says. “Changes in the ocean — whether it be El Niño or La Niña or higher temperatures or acidification — affect the estuary, along with changes on the land, from erosion to rainfall to contaminants. The estuary gets impacts from both sides. That’s what makes it particularly fragile.”

Rising sea level is another concern on the community’s horizon. As polar ice and glaciers melt, seas are getting higher along with waves and tides. Higher tides carry saltwater farther inland, where it can intrude on freshwater systems. The aquifer that supplies Florence’s drinking water could be at risk for inundation. Oregon’s only federally designated “sole-source aquifer,” this pristine reservoir holds millions of gallons of rainwater that has filtered through Florence’s famous sand dunes.

Despite Florence’s status as a forward-looking town whose environmental leadership is perhaps unmatched on the Oregon coast, the topic of climate change still raises hackles for some, according to Belson. In July when the city council considered the Siuslaw Estuary Partnership’s Climate Change Report, the councilors “decided to not set policy regarding climate change at the current time,” the minutes show.

Meanwhile, the partnership is moving ahead with wetlands restoration and water monitoring. Going straight for solutions while sidestepping the contentious public debate seems to Belson like a pragmatic approach — at least for now. “One of our county commissioners told us we shouldn’t discuss whether climate change is or isn’t happening, but to focus instead on the strategies for dealing with whatever environmental stresses may come about,” she says. “That way we can be resilient and adaptable to anything that may happen, whether it’s a tsunami or an invasive species or human-caused climate change.”