Click on the orange text below to see the animations.

Top view: Top view of data from a multibeam sonar observations of dolphin foraging. This animation is a composite of three observations overlapping in foraging stage to permit a visualization of a complete foraging bout. Each frame is the composite of six successive sonar echoes, providing higher resolution and three-dimensional information while minimizing noise in the data. The strong air cavity echo from each dolphin is represented by the dots. Isosurfaces of prey scattering strength identified from spatial statistics are shown in purple with lighter colors representing higher scattering. The travel of the vessel has been removed and the data is shown at 8 times real time.

Side view: Side view of data from a multibeam sonar observation of a foraging dolphins. This animation is a composite of three observations overlapping in foraging stage to permit a visualization of a complete foraging bout. Each frame is the composite of six successive sonar echoes, providing higher resolution and three-dimensional information while minimizing noise in the data. The strong air cavity echo from each dolphin is represented by the dots. Blue dots show dolphins behind the center of the circle and yellow represent dolphins in front of this plane. Isosurfaces of prey scattering strength identified from spatial statistics are shown in purple with lighter colors representing higher scattering. The travel of the vessel has been removed and the data is shown at 8 times real time.

3-d view: Dolphin positions recorded from a multibeam sonar observation of a foraging dolphin group. This animation is a composite of three observations overlapping in foraging stage to permit a visualization of a complete foraging bout. Each frame is the composite of six successive sonar echoes, providing higher resolution and three- dimensional information while minimizing noise in the data. The strong air cavity echo from each dolphin is represented by the dots. The travel of the vessel has been removed and the data is shown at 8 times real time.

Kelly Benoit-Bird (Photo: Craig Mitchelldyer, Getty Images for the McArthur Foundation)

Kelly Benoit-Bird studies ocean organisms smaller than a microchip and bigger than a luxury motor home — the tiniest crustaceans to the mightiest cetaceans. In effect, she studies just about anything that swims or drifts in the sea: copepods and krill, diatoms and dinoflagellates, siphonophores and salps, spinner dolphins and Humboldt squid, Pacific sardines and sperm whales. Not only is she unbounded by species classifications, she also is unrestrained by the dimensions of time and space. What drives her research is, indeed, the traversing of those very dimensions by animals and plants in search of survival.

As a pelagic (open-ocean) ecologist, Benoit-Bird investigates the intricate interactions among predators and prey that take place day and night, full moon to new moon, summer to winter, El Niño to La Niña in Earth’s vast oceans.

“Despite the apparent variety of the ongoing research projects in my lab, all of our research aims to understand the role of spatial and temporal patterns in ecological processes on spatial scales ranging from sub-meter to hundreds of kilometers, at temporal scales of minutes to years, and over a range of animal size from zooplankton to great whales,” Benoit-Bird explains on her webpage for Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.

The challenge is almost beyond imagining. Within the world’s 326 million cubic miles of seawater, most species interactions happen where humans cannot witness them. Besides, as Benoit-Bird points out, the marine environment is in constant motion. On land, plants hold fast to the ground. Forests may be complex ecosystems to study, but at least they stay put. At sea, plants drift on tides and currents, rising and falling in the water column with the sun and the moon and the seasons.

“In the ocean, plants are incredibly small, have very little structure and move all over the place — sometimes even actively,” the researcher says. “Some of the plants can swim.”

To compensate, Benoit-Bird extends her senses. She devises novel acoustic and optical technologies that collect data remotely, giving scientists a virtual front-row seat on some of nature’s most mysterious processes. Her innovations are opening the world’s oceans to human understanding in ways never before possible. In 2010, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recognized her pioneering work with a prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship — popularly known as a “Genius Award.”

Life in Layers

Instead of being like a big pot of soup with its ingredients evenly mixed, the ocean is more like a big blue torte with dense congregations of organisms layered vertically, Benoit-Bird and other oceanographers have learned in recent years. In coastal waters across the planet, scientists have discovered that plankton, both in its plant and animal forms, coalesce into layers two or three feet thick, sometimes extending for miles horizontally. These “thin layers” of tiny life forms — which Benoit-Bird calls “great smorgasbords of food”
— likely hold critical clues to how ocean ecosystems work.

“While thin layers are just beginning to be investigated,” Benoit- Bird writes in a recent issue of Continental Shelf Research, “thin layers are likely to be important for a variety of biological processes, including growth rates, reproductive success, grazing, predator-prey encounters, nutrient uptake and cycling rates, as well as toxin production.”

To get inside those mysteries from the deck of a research vessel, Benoit- Bird has been developing a whole new generation of tools. She uses sonar technologies to collect acoustical data that are then fed into computers for analysis. To broaden their options, she and her collaborators have experimented with linking disparate gear types, such as video cameras and echosounders (devices that locate layers and schools of organisms by sending out pulses of sound waves). They’ve designed new uses for old standbys, like retrofitting a remotely operated vehicle (“a little tethered robot”) to find and track plankton layers by following water density. They’ve invented a new kind of sonar to study the distribution of individual zooplankton inside thin layers.

Her ambitious research goals, supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies, necessarily push her toward more expansive technologies.

“My perspective is that we shouldn’t be limited by the tools we have,” she says. “I like to think about the question first and figure out how to address it later. It may mean we have to develop a new tool or a new way of analyzing data or a new way of deploying instruments to get at the questions we’re interested in.”

A “Spatial Ballet”

Computer animations created from recent acoustical studies show fish diving through plankton layers, gobbling holes in the tightly packed, food-rich patches. Another animation shows spinner dolphins swimming in tight formation to corral layers of lanternfish during coopera- tive feeding.

“The emerging picture is one of an incalculably complex, finely tuned, and delicate interaction between predators and prey, chemistry and light, currents and water column, night and day,” writes author Julia Whitty in a recent Mother Jones article featuring Benoit-Bird. “Some semblance of this spatial ballet, played in weightless three-dimensional darkness, has likely been part of the oceans since the oceans were brought to life: layers of life gathering in extremely high densities to feed or to avoid being eaten.”

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For information about supporting research and teaching through faculty endowments, contact the Oregon State University Foundation, 1-800-354-7281 or visit CampaignforOSU.org.

Federal agencies are funding OSU research on tsunamis, marine ecosystems, wave energy, ocean observing, invasive species and acidification, among other things. In September 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy created a Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, further cementing the university’s leadership in wave energy and bringing to $13 million the total amount of funding for the initiative. Researchers are looking at environmental (how will marine organisms respond to subsurface electrical fields?) and technical (what engineered systems will be most effective?) questions and collaborating with state agencies, communities and the private sector.

National Leadership

In 2009, OSU zoology professor Jane Lubchenco became administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the second OSU faculty member to hold that position after John Byrne in the 1980s, who later became president of OSU. In addition, Kelly Falkner, former professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS), now leads the National Science Foundation’s polar research programs. Her COAS colleagues have made similar contributions: Professor Mike Freilich heads NASA’s Earth Science Division; Mark Abbott, dean of the college, is a member of the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF and advises Congress and the president; and Emeritus Professor Tim Cowles directs the national Ocean Observatories Initiative. (See “Run Silent, Run Deep” on Terra)

In August 2009, NOAA announced that it would move its Pacific Fleet operations from Seattle to Newport to be adjacent to OSU’s Hatfield Center, a stunning economic boon for the mid-Oregon coast that will bring as many as 175 NOAA employees, a half-dozen ships and an annual economic impact in the tens of millions.
Ocean Observing

Shortly after that, NSF announced that OSU would be one of the lead institutions on a $386.4 million Ocean Observatories Initiative that, among other things, will establish a system of surface moorings, seafloor platforms and undersea gliders to monitor the ocean — with a major presence off Newport.

“Oregon State University has perhaps more breadth and depth in marine and coastal science than anyone, and that opens up a lot of doors,” says Abbott. “In addition to expertise in many different disciplines, we provide fundamental science, research with direct application, and now we’re providing new access to the ocean through ships, satellites, the Ocean Observatories Initiative, gliders, the Marine Mammal Institute and other programs — and we do it on a global scale.”

“Sea Cow College”

OSU’s emergence as a force in marine and ocean sciences has been in the works for decades. The university came of age as an agricultural institution, developed the top-ranked forestry program in the country, and toward the end of the last century, became an emerging force in engineering. Marine sciences got some recognition, such as when OSU oceanographers discovered the first documented undersea hydrothermal vents and when John Byrne was named NOAA administrator.

But no one ever accused OSU of being a sea cow college. “We’ve always been the light under the bushel basket,” says Abbott. “Face it, fundamental science isn’t necessarily sexy. But more and more people are beginning to notice Oregon State because of the volume of high-quality research, our federal leadership, the emergence of programs with applications to real-world problems and that confluence of recent major events.”

Oceanography began at OSU in the late 1950s under the leadership of Wayne Burt, but its reach was limited by poor facilities and little access to the ocean. The 16-foot fiberglass boat Burt used in those early days was restricted to Yaquina Bay, and it wasn’t until the Office of Naval Research provided a sea-going 80-foot research vessel called the Acona in 1961 that the university was able to attract new ocean scientists, says Byrne.

The R/V Yaquina followed in 1964, and a year later, OSU opened the Hatfield Marine Science Center as a research, education and outreach facility. As both HMSC and COAS grew, the university developed marine science strengths in other areas — marine ecology, fisheries and wildlife, the nationally recognized Oregon Sea Grant program, wave energy, tsunamis and others.

The growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. In 2008-09, Oregon State University spent nearly $100 million on ocean and coastal research — 37 percent of all OSU research expenditures. And a funny thing happened along the way. Fundamental science has become — if not sexy — at least necessary in the eyes of the public. When the oil tanker New Carissa sank near Coos Bay in 1999, OSU physical oceanographers explained where the currents would carry the spilled oil. When the Pacific Ocean off Oregon was first plagued by low-oxygen areas that led to periodic marine “dead zones” in 2001-02, an interdisciplinary team of OSU researchers described the phenomenon and explained its origins.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people drew comparisons with Oregon’s own Cascadia Subduction Zone and brought the university’s researchers into the spotlight. OSU’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory includes one of the world’s foremost tsunami wave basins.

In 2010, as British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon well continued to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico, OSU researchers were documenting the effects. Kim Anderson of OSU’s Superfund Research Program established a sensor network to monitor PAHs (petroleum-based compounds) in the air and water. Bruce Mate, director of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, led efforts to monitor sperm whale movements. Stephen Brandt, director of Oregon Sea Grant, conducted his sixth assessment of fish habitat in the northern Gulf “dead zone.”

The strength of OSU’s expertise gained additional recognition this year when COAS scientist Kelly Benoit-Bird received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, which carried a $500,000 grant for her research. She specializes in the use of acoustics to study marine ecology. (See “Genius of the Sea”)

Today, Oregon Sea Grant Director Stephen Brandt leads OSU’s Marine Council, which aims to enhance and to coordinate a global research enterprise. With scientists conducting studies from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, Oregon State’s leadership in international ocean science is literal.

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An earlier version of this story, “Powered by Oceans,” appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of the Oregon Stater magazine.

For information about supporting research and teaching through faculty endowments, contact the Oregon State University Foundation, 1-800-354-7281 or visit CampaignforOSU.org.