Dinoflagellate Ceratium with star-shaped Acantharians in the background (Photo: Angelicque White)

During a Pacific Ocean research cruise, Angel White peers into her microscope. The ship rides gentle swells and sways side to side. In her field of view, organisms the size of dust motes rise and fall through their own watery world. “It can be disorienting and enthralling at the same time. The microbes are dying as I look at them, and it doesn’t always make for the best photos,” she says.

White studies plankton, the microorganisms that power the marine food chain, pump oxygen into the atmosphere and regulate global chemical cycles. In the course of her research, she has recorded an astonishing diversity of living shapes, forms, colors and patterns: spiny Radiolarians, fat copepods, football-shaped ostracods and coiled threads of Trichodesmium that coalesce into filamentous balls. Under fluorescent light, her photos reveal organisms within organisms, glowing constellations that rival images from the best space telescopes.

White’s science is strictly down to Earth. The assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences aims to reveal how plankton consume and release nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus and how, in turn, these abundant organisms respond to variations in temperature and water chemistry. Her tools run the gamut from high-tech instruments to old-school nets towed behind a ship. In the lab, her camera has become invaluable in her exploration of a world that is largely invisible to the naked eye.

Three isopods clutch one another (Photo: Angelicque White)

“Photography is a wonderful outlet for creativity and discovery,” she adds. “Plankton show an amazing array of different adaptations to their environment. If you concentrate them in a drop of ocean water and look through the microscope, you will see organisms feeding, swimming, gliding, tumbling and floating. There are blues and reds, jaws and antennae — whole alien worlds.”

Call to Artists

In 2012, 35 Oregon artists took up a call from The Arts Center of Corvallis for works based on White’s plankton images. Submissions came from painters, fabric and glass artists, sculptors, potters and an expert in the ancient Japanese art of stencil dyeing. They comprised a show, The Art of Plankton, Form Follows Function.

The range of art gave White a new view of a world that she has explored through her research. “I’ve been fortunate over the years to look through a microscope and be thrilled with the familiar and the mysterious,” she says. “And now to have a whole range of creative people re-envision what I saw the first time is very cool. The natural world can be astonishingly beautiful.

“The general view is that scientists pick it apart and explain it through cold and methodical equations. It is easy to get lost in the details and lose a sense of wonder. This collaboration — merging the perspectives and talents of artists with science — is refreshing. It reminds me what it was like that first time at sea, the first time I realized that, ‘oh no, really, the ocean teems with life, glorious tiny life.’ That sense of discovery is what I felt talking to the artists.”

Drifters 1, Leah Wilson, Eugene

Leviathan, Rakar West, Eugene

Parum Aqua Flora, Sidnee Snell, Corvallis

Emiliana Coccolithophore, Ella Rhoades, Corvallis

Drifters, Sara McCormick, Portland

Blue Button, Sandra Schock-Houtman, Corvallis

Tondos, Jenny Gray, Corvallis

Benthos, Jerri Bartholomew, Corvallis

The Collection, Chi Meredith, Corvallis

Since its establishment in 2008, NNMREC has attracted nearly $20 million in private, state and federal support.

The NNMREC wave energy test site is about three nautical miles off Yaquina Head near Newport, Ore.

Just off the coast, not far from OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, a marine ecologist affiliated with NNMREC has been analyzing life on the seafloor. Working at depths of 60 to more than 400 feet, Sarah Henkel and a student team scoop sand and sediments to examine organisms and physical properties. They conduct beam trawls to gather bottom-dwelling fish. They use a remotely operated vehicle to survey rocky outcrops.

Henkel aims to anticipate the biological consequences of ocean wave energy on the Oregon coast. Her work complements studies of gray whale migrations conducted by OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute (MMI). In a 2007-08 survey, a team led by MMI Director Bruce Mate followed 120 whales within about 10 nautical miles of the shore. “As expected,” they reported, “the migration paths of some gray whales cross through areas of proposed wave energy development.” Studies under way focus on acoustic techniques to help whales avoid wave energy arrays if the facilities are deemed to create problems for the animals in the future.

Meanwhile, OSU engineers are testing wave energy devices and working with AXYS Technologies, Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, to build a new offshore moored test buoy. A search for an additional test site connected to the nation’s power grid is being led by Sean Moran, NNMREC ocean test facilities manager.

Testing the Wind

To add a new wrinkle to ocean energy, scientists are starting to investigate the potential to capture energy from sea winds. With a U.S. Department of Energy grant, Rob Suryan, a seabird expert at OSU, will lead another NNMREC project to develop remote monitoring technologies that can assess potential wind turbine impacts on seabirds and bats.

The goal is a thorough analysis of Oregon’s wave energy potential. Engineered systems will need to survive extreme ocean conditions and minimize impact on the environment and traditional ocean uses. “We’ve got the technical side, the environmental side and the outreach to communities through Oregon Sea Grant. You don’t have that everywhere,” says Belinda Batten, director of NNMREC.

Plans are to deploy the NNMREC’s test buoy in a site three nautical miles off the coast at Newport in 2012. The moored buoy will allow wave energy developers to place their devices in the ocean and monitor performance. “It can gather all the data we need about the devices: systems performance and power analysis. The developers will go out and moor alongside the buoy and connect through a cable,” says Batten, a mechanical engineer.

Companies such as Columbia Power Technologies, Neptune Wave Power and Northwest Wave Energy Innovations have been discussing plans for testing prototypes in Oregon. A fourth company, Ocean Power Technologies, has already received permits for a small commercial-scale device near Reedsport.

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.”

In 2008, I participated in one of the few scientific expeditions aimed at characterizing the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impacts of plastic on microbial communities. That expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.

Plastic “nurdles,” a pre-production material for manufacturing plants, are a common cargo in merchant vessels and a significant component of ocean pollution. OSU oceanographer Charles Miller recovered these plastic bits (about 3 millimeters across, less than half the size of a pencil eraser) from the North Pacific gyre in 1971. (Photo: David Reinert, COAS; photoillustration, Teresa Hall)

Standing on the bow of a research ship, floating in the heart of the alleged garbage patch, my colleagues and I looked out onto a calm, apparently pristine blue ocean. By towing a mesh net through these waters and deploying instruments capable of measuring particle size and abundance, it became clear that the sea around us actually contained few, very small pieces of plastic. If you were to line up 1,000 1-liter Nalgene™ bottles filled with ocean water from this location, one to five of them would contain a single piece of plastic roughly the size of a worn-down pencil eraser. In comparison, plankton (millions to billions of organisms per milliliter) outnumber and outweigh plastic by a considerable measure.

The amount of plastic out there isn’t inconsequential, but using the highest concentrations ever reported by scientists, the plastic debris floating in the surface waters of the North Pacific could be rounded up to produce a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size. This is not to say that the issue of plastic in the ocean should be dismissed; rather, the problem is more complex and enigmatic.

One of the longest records of ocean plastic comes from the western North Atlantic. Compiling a 22-year survey of plastic debris, researchers reported concentrations very similar to what we found in the Pacific, but there was a catch. The amount of plastic in the North Atlantic has not increased since the mid-1980s, despite a surge in plastic production over the same period. This unexpected conclusion has led to a lot of speculation: Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean? Is more plastic sinking out of the surface waters? Is plastic being more efficiently broken down? At present, we just don’t know.

New research findings may point to one part of the answer: microbes! Not only is plastic prime real estate for microbes, but they may actively degrade it. This interesting finding may partially explain the mystery of “missing plastic” in the Atlantic.

If there is a take-home message, it’s that plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean. The practical solution is to reduce the input of plastic into our oceans in the first place. There is no need to exaggerate the problem to Texas-sized proportions.

A school of yellow tang in Hawaii (photo by Bill Walsh)

The findings add credibility to what scientists have believed for some time, but until now been unable to directly document. The study also provides a significant demonstration of the ability of marine reserves to rebuild fishery stocks in areas outside the reserves.

The research was published this week in PLoS One, a scientific journal.

“We already know that marine reserves will grow larger fish and some of them will leave that specific area, what we call spillover,” said Mark Hixon, a professor of marine biology at OSU. “Now we’ve clearly shown that fish larvae that were spawned inside marine reserves can drift with currents and replenish fished areas long distances away.

“This is a direct observation, not just a model, that successful marine reserves can sustain fisheries beyond their borders,” he said. “That’s an important result that should help resolve some skepticism about reserves. And the life cycle of our study fish is very similar to many species of marine fish, including rockfishes and other species off Oregon. The results are highly relevant to other regions.”

The findings were based on the creation in 1999 of nine marine protected areas on the west coast of the “big island” of Hawaii. They were set up in the face of serious declines of a beautiful tropical fish called yellow tang, which formed the basis for an important trade in the aquarium industry.

“This fishery was facing collapse about 10 years ago,” Hixon said. “Now, after the creation of marine reserves, the fishery is doing well.”

The yellow tang was an ideal fish to help answer the question of larval dispersal because once its larvae settle onto a reef and begin to grow, they are not migratory, and live in a home range about half a mile in diameter. If the fish are going to move any significant distance from where they are born, it would have to be as a larva – a young life form about the size of a grain of rice – drifting with the currents for up to two months before settling back to adult habitats.

Mark Christie, an OSU postdoctoral research associate and lead author of the study, developed some new

Yellow tang larvae drift for miles on ocean currents before settling to live in coral reefs (Photo: Sarah Mctee)

approaches to the use of DNA fingerprinting and sophisticated statistical analysis that were able to match juvenile fish with their parents, wherever they may have been from. In field research from 2006, the scientists performed genetic and statistical analyses on 1,073 juvenile and adult fish, and found evidence that many healthy juvenile fish had spawned from parents long distances away, up to 114 miles, including some from marine protected areas.

“This is similar to the type of forensic technology you might see on television, but more advanced,” Christie said. “We’re optimistic it will help us learn a great deal more about fish movements, fishery stocks, and the genetic effects of fishing, including work with steelhead, salmon, rockfish and other species here in the Pacific Northwest.”

This study should help answer some of the questions about the ability of marine reserves to help rebuild fisheries, the scientists said. It should also add scientific precision to the siting of reserves for that purpose, which is just one of many roles that a marine reserve can play. Many states are establishing marine reserves off their coasts, and Oregon is in the process of developing a limited network of marine reserves to test their effectiveness. The methods used in this study could also become a powerful new tool to improve fisheries management, Hixon said.

“Tracking the movement of fish larvae in the open ocean isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do,” Hixon said. “It’s not like putting a radio collar on a deer. This approach will provide valuable information to help optimize the placement of reserves, identify the boundaries of fishery stocks, and other applications.”

The issue of larval dispersal is also important, the researchers say, because past studies at OSU have shown that large, fat female fish produce massive amounts of eggs and sometimes healthier larvae than smaller fish. For example, a single two-foot vermillion rockfish produces more eggs than 17 females that are 14 inches long.

But these same large fish, which have now been shown to play key roles in larval production and fish population replenishment, are also among those most commonly sought in fisheries.

The study was done in collaboration with the University of Hawaii, Washington State University, National Marine Fisheries Services and the Hawaii Department of Natural Resources. It was funded by Conservation International.

“The identification of connectivity between distant reef fish populations on the island of Hawaii demonstrates that human coastal communities are also linked,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion. “Management in one part of the ocean affects people who use another part of the ocean.”

________________________

See Mark Hixon’s 2010 “Oceans of Life” presentation, including videos and images of seafloor trawling.

Atlantis Massif Rock from deep beneath this undersea mountain in the Atlantic Ocean was recently studied to reveal some of the microbial life interactions going on in the deepest ocean crust ever explored. (Image courtesy of PLoS One; study number E15399)

The first study to ever explore biological activity in the deepest layer of ocean crust has found bacteria with a remarkable range of capabilities, including eating hydrocarbons and natural gas, and “fixing” or storing carbon.

The research, just published in the journal PLoS One, showed that a significant number and amount of bacterial forms were present, even in temperatures near the boiling point of water.

“This is a new ecosystem that almost no one has ever explored,” said Martin Fisk, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. “We expected some bacterial forms, but the long list of biological functions that are taking place so deep beneath the Earth is surprising.”

Oceanic crust covers about 70 percent of the surface of the Earth and its geology has been explored to some extent, but practically nothing is known about its biology – partly because it’s difficult and expensive, and partly because most researchers had assumed not all that much was going on.

The temperature of the sediments and rock increases with depth, and scientists now believe that the upper temperature at which life can exist is around 250 degrees. The ocean floor is generally composed of three levels, including a shallow layer of sediment; basalt formed from solidified magma; and an even deeper level of basalt that cooled more slowly and is called the “gabbro” layer, which forms the majority of ocean crust.

The gabbro layer doesn’t even begin until the crust is about two miles thick. But at a site in the Atlantic Ocean near an undersea mountain, the Atlantis Massif, core samples were obtained from gabbro rock formations that were closer to the surface than usual because they had been uplifted and exposed by faulting. This allowed the researchers to investigate for the first time the microbiology of these rocks.

A research expedition drilled more than 4,600 feet into this formation, into rock that was very deep and very old, and found a wide range of biological activity. Microbes were degrading hydrocarbons, some appeared to be capable of oxidizing methane, and there were genes active in the process of fixing, or converting from a gas, both nitrogen and carbon.

The findings are of interest, in part, because little is known about the role the deep ocean crust may play in carbon storage and fixation. Increasing levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas when in the atmosphere, in turn raise the levels of carbon dioxide in the oceans.

But it now appears that microbes in the deep ocean crust have at least a genetic potential for carbon storage, the report said. And it may lend credence to one concept for reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere, by pumping carbon dioxide into deep subsurface layers where it might be sequestered permanently.

The researchers also noted that methane found on Mars could be derived from geological sources, and concluded that subsurface environments on Mars where methane is produced could support bacteria like those found in this study.

“These findings don’t offer any easy or simple solutions to some of the environmental issues that are of interest to us on Earth, such as greenhouse warming or oil spill pollution,” Fisk said. “However, they do indicate there’s a whole world of biological activity deep beneath the ocean that we don’t know much about, and we need to study.”

Microbial processes in this expansive subseafloor environment “have the potential to significantly influence the biogeochemistry of the ocean and the atmosphere,” the researchers wrote in their report.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Collaborators were from OSU, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Tohoku University in Japan, Universitat Bremen in Germany, University of Oklahoma, and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan.

OSU oceanographer Jack Barth and colleague Patricia Wheeler discovered a Jet Stream “wobble” that may be responsible for changes in wind patterns and ocean productivity. What’s behind the phenomenon is unclear. (Photo: Jim Folts)

In his 32 years as a crab fisherman off the central Oregon coast, Al Pazar has pulled up a lot of strange things in his pots: wolf eels, skates, huge starfish, fossilized rocks, octopi, fish that rarely stray south of Alaska, and others that prefer the warm subtropical waters off Mexico. But until July 2002, he had never yanked up a pot full of dead Dungeness crabs.

“At that moment,” he says, “I was absolutely shocked.”

At first Pazar blamed himself, figuring he had done something wrong in baiting or placing his pots, though he couldn’t come up with a rational cause. By the time he pulled up a second pot of dead Dungeness, his shock gave way to anger. His thought? Someone must have soaked a forest in herbicides and the toxin had floated down the Alsea River and out to sea, poisoning one of his favorite crabbing spots.

By the end of the day, Pazar’s anger had been replaced by recognition that something was happening out there. He admits a feeling of fear as he contemplated his livelihood. Dungeness crabs, he says, are the lifeblood of Oregon’s fishing industry. Coastal communities already rocked by closures and restricted seasons for salmon and groundfish would blow away in the Pacific wind without the economic stability provided by the tasty Dungeness.

That night, Pazar called state officials to report his find.

The System Shifts

For eons, ocean conditions have literally changed with the wind, but in the last decade, marine scientists have seen extraordinary shifts off the West Coast. From a powerful El Niño in 1997-98 that warmed near-shore waters and starved the marine food web to the “super-charged” upwelling event of 2006 that nearly choked the system with blooms of plankton, the waters off Oregon have become a unique laboratory drawing international attention.

The central Oregon coast has been plagued by hypoxia, or extremely low levels of oxygen in the water, for each of the last five years. The die-off of bottom-dwelling creatures Pazar first experienced in 2002 has continued each summer, with last year’s episode the largest yet.

At the 2007 national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Oregon State University Professor Jack Barth told the assembled scientists that these changes are consistent with global warming models. “But,” he said, “it’s still too early to say what we’ve experienced is the result of climate change. There are a lot of natural cycles out there that we don’t fully understand.

“On the other hand,” Barth added, “we’ve never before seen such dramatic change in such rapid fashion.”

A physical oceanographer in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Barth has specialized in the California Current, a complex system that extends from Oregon to Baja. Reaching more than 600 miles offshore, it comprises surface waters that flow south, deep water that flows north and meandering eddies that have puzzled researchers for decades.

The bountiful Pacific provides us with salmon, halibut and tuna from the “upper trophic” level of a biological food web that is maintained through complex physical oceanic and atmospheric processes. The key ingredient in this recipe for productivity is the wind. But the process for fueling this dynamic begins with another Oregon staple — rain.

When Oregon rivers rise during winter rains, they leach iron from surrounding rocks and transport it to the ocean where it fertilizes the marine food system. OSU oceanographer Zanna Chase and her colleagues have sampled water from Oregon rivers in the winter and found iron levels roughly 1,000 times higher than in samples of seawater. This river-born iron gets pushed out onto the continental shelf, which acts as a “capacitor,” Chase says, storing the element for the upwelling season.

“Oregon has more rain, more rivers and a wider continental shelf to store the iron than California. That explains why our stretch of ocean is so much more biologically productive than theirs. Our productivity isn’t limited by a lack of iron, whereas the waters off central and southern California are iron-starved by comparison,” Chase explains.

Scientists who study marine food webs may look at Oregon with a sense of iron-envy. A lack of iron in many parts of the world’s oceans, particularly in the open seas, is a limiting factor in biological productivity. Still, experiments “fertilizing” the seas with iron have met with mixed results.

In Oregon, such additions are hardly necessary. When north winds begin blowing in the spring, they drive the surface water offshore, a process that pulls deep nutrient-rich water to the surface near the coast. Thus the season of “upwelling” begins with fertilization of the upper water column. In the presence of sunlight, nutrients trigger blooms of microscopic plant life (phytoplankton), which in turn are eaten by a variety of miniscule animals (zooplankton), which are consumed by sardines, herring and candlefish. Waiting in line are the higher echelon predators, including salmon and tuna.

As the phytoplankton and zooplankton die, their remains sink to the bottom and provide additional fertilizer for the ocean system to replenish itself. Sometimes, however, that system can break down.

When Things Go Haywire

In 1997-98, a powerful El Niño raised water temperatures along the West Coast. Nutrient levels decreased, biological production dropped, and species from zooplankton to salmon either disappeared, were drastically cut back or moved from their typical habitats. The El Niño capped what had been a series of years through the 1990s characterized by warm waters and weak upwelling.

That “warm-water regime” ended abruptly in 1998, and the California Current shifted into another extreme. For the next four years the waters off the West Coast were much colder than usual. Upwelling was strong, biological productivity was healthy, and salmon runs began rebounding. At the end of 2002, an unprecedented surge of cold, nutrient-rich sub-Arctic water flowed southward into the region.

“It triggered massive phytoplankton production in surface waters,” Barth says, “and as the organisms decayed and sank to the bottom, they sucked the oxygen out of the lower water column. That was our first experience with hypoxia leading to die-offs of crabs and other marine life.”

In that pivotal year of 2002, OSU was leading a four-institution research effort called the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, or PISCO, that was funded primarily by the Packard and Moore foundations and OSU alumnus Robert Lundeen to look at near-shore processes. Barth and OSU colleagues Jane Lubchenco, Bruce Menge and Francis Chan (Department of Zoology) came to the same realization that Pazar had — something was happening out there.

With the flexibility of private funding, they assembled an interdisciplinary team to closely monitor the physical conditions of the hypoxic zone in a region that extends into the Pacific from Lincoln City to Florence along the central Oregon coast. The researchers used moorings and ship-based instruments to record measurements of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and water chemistry. They used satellite images to look at the ocean’s “skin,” or surface, to analyze the blooms of phytoplankton. Technology was an ally.

During the next two years the research team identified milder hypoxic events, and the scientists felt they were beginning to understand how the system worked. And then in 2005, things went haywire once again. The winds that trigger spring upwelling were late in arriving by a month. Near-shore waters were 2 degrees warmer than usual, and chlorophyll levels in the surf zone went down by 50 percent.

“It was the lowest ‘wind stress’ for favorable upwelling in the region in at least 20 years,” Barth says. “The winds eventually picked up and upwelling began, but it was too late for some species that depended on those nutrients. The lesson we learned is that it isn’t just the direction and strength of the wind that matters; timing is critical, too.”

Their focus on the wind led to two key discoveries. The first was that wind patterns have been shifting over the past few years. Two decades ago, for example, it was typical to see two to five days in a row of persistent winds, followed by a similar period of calm. During the past decade, however, those oscillations have been on the order of 20 to 40 days, Barth says.

“Wild fluctuations in the timing and intensity of the winds that drive the system are wreaking havoc with the historically rich ocean ecosystems off the West Coast.”
Jane Lubchenco

These longer wind patterns can lead to a major delay in upwelling, as in 2005, or a “super-charged” upwelling, as happened in 2006. Last year, the upwelling winds were so favorable that the system became choked, according to Chan. Phytoplankton blooms were everywhere. And eventually, the organisms had to sink to the bottom, where their decay led to the largest hypoxic event the West Coast had yet seen. Some 3,000 square kilometers of the continental shelf along the Oregon coast were affected.

“It was literally too much of a good thing,” Chan says. “And one of the most eye-opening aspects was how long it lasted. We used to think we knew how fast hypoxia dissipated — until last year. The winds just didn’t have a southern component, so we got all upwelling and no downwelling. The pool of low-oxygen water just kept growing and growing, and it took weeks for it to flush itself out.”

The multi-week wind patterns had struck again, leading the researchers to confirm their second discovery. Barth and a colleague, OSU Distinguished Professor Patricia Wheeler, had led a recently completed National Science Foundation study off central Oregon that identified a “wobble” in the Jet Stream that they suspected was leading to these new longer wind patterns. This high-altitude air stream circles the globe and flows toward the West Coast of the United States. In recent years, Barth says, its path has begun shifting, and when it migrates slightly to the south, it delays the upwelling. A shift to the north may lead to stronger upwelling and potentially severe hypoxic events, as well. Barth and his team are working to confirm evidence that in 2006 it migrated north and led to one of the strongest upwelling events they have seen — and the largest hypoxic event, as well.

Why the wobble?

“That’s one reason we need to continue studying our oceans and atmosphere,” Barth says. “We don’t have all the answers yet.”

More Eyes and Ears

Al Pazar isn’t convinced that the ocean is broken. In each of the years following hypoxic events, the chairman of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission has returned to his crabbing grounds and enjoyed strong harvests. He says there is much we don’t know about the ocean’s natural cycles and points to the surprising return of sardines to Oregon, where they have mostly been absent for the past 75 years.

“I don’t believe all the doom and gloom I see in the press,” Pazar says. “I’ve fished through all of the ‘dead zones,’ and had better-than-average years after each one. Crabs aren’t stupid. They have legs. And they’ll use them to get the hell out of there if they can.”

Then he paused. And sighed.

“There is still a lot we don’t know,” he admits. “Do you know that the state of Oregon doesn’t even have a crab biologist? We need to study the Dungeness and see where they go and how they respond when this stuff happens.”

The OSU researchers agree and say scientific observations need to be expanded well beyond Dungeness crab. Since West Coast conditions turned extreme a decade ago, sea birds have died, salmon runs have yo-yoed up and down, mussel and barnacle juvenile recruitment has suffered, and the entire system of ocean productivity seemingly changes from year to year.

“The ocean may be losing its ability to replenish itself, to re-cleanse itself. There is real potential we may push it too far before we realize what we’re doing.”

Jack Barth

More than the marine food web is at stake. The Pacific Ocean plays a major role in balancing the Earth’s carbon dioxide, says OSU oceanographer Burke Hales.

“The ocean off Oregon alone annually negates the effects of about 100 million tanks of gasoline feeding greenhouse gas discharges into the air,” Hales says. “Phytoplankton blooms draw the CO₂ out of the atmosphere and consume it, then sink to the bottom and die. We think they are transported to the deep ocean, in which case the carbon dioxide will stay there for a thousand years.

“But if they decompose on the shelf,” he adds, “the CO₂ will just return to the atmosphere, and we don’t have the carbon ‘sink’ we think we do.”

The bottom line, Barth says, is that Oregon needs a coordinated, comprehensive ocean observing system instead of a piecemeal approach. He and colleague Kipp Shearman operate three undersea gliders that cost $100,000 apiece. “We need 10 to cover the near-shore from Brookings to Astoria,” he says.

The gliders complement moorings, buoys, satellites and ships, Barth says, but the state needs more instruments, more coordination and more human resources to keep its collective eyes and ears on the ocean. The beneficiaries will be commercial and recreational fishermen, boating enthusiasts, Coast Guard rescue teams, coastal residents and others, he adds.

OSU is uniquely positioned to lead the effort. Scientists in four OSU colleges conduct marine research, and the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences alone competed successfully for $24.3 million in research grants in FY2006. Marine science facilities at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport include two research ships, the Wecoma and the Elakha. The Corvallis campus hosts the world’s largest tsunami wave tank and a premier marine supercomputing network. In a regional project, Oregon Sea Grant is working with Sea Grant programs in California and Washington on a first-ever marine resource management plan for the West Coast.

If the dramatic changes continue in our section of the Pacific Ocean, those assets will become invaluable.

“Wild fluctuations in the timing and intensity of the winds that drive the system are wreaking havoc with the historically rich ocean ecosystems off the West Coast,” Jane Lubchenco said at the 2007 AAAS meeting. “As climate continues to change, these arrhythmias may become more erratic. Improved monitoring and understanding of the connection between temperatures, winds, upwelling and ecosystem responses will greatly facilitate capacity to manage those parts of the system we can control.”

“We’re seeing more and more ecosystem effects,” Barth adds. “As the system swings from one extreme to another, it may become less resilient. The ocean may be losing its ability to replenish itself, to re-cleanse itself. There is real potential we may push it too far before we realize what we’re doing.

“And the only way to prevent that,” he argues, “is by observing what is happening out there. When the world wanted to understand El Niño, it put a massive array of instruments on the equator. If we put the same amount of resources and will into studying our coastal ocean’s productivity and carbon, we can make real progress.”