In a Google image search for “ocean biodiversity”, the top hundred hits are some variation of the same picture: solo sea turtle swimming through the vibrant colors of a coral reef alongside schools of shimmering fish and past eels lurking in the shadows. Throw in a shark here and there or a close-up of some brain coral and a squid. It’s understandable. Coral reefs and tropical ocean habitats are charismatic, exciting, and beautiful places that are probably on the bucket lists of half of America. It’s a real life version of Avatar, one of the most visually stunning films of all time.
Meanwhile, the rocky intertidal zones and mudflats of the Pacific Northwest coastline are closer to Napoleon Dynamite; low budget, unexciting, a little strange and uncomfortable at times in a way that makes you just want to get up and leave the room. But not without value, as the millions of “Vote for Pedro” shirt sales can attest to. In fact, in one hectare (a football field by football field area of space) certain ecosystems of the Oregon shore, including salt marshes and estuaries, operate at the same level of productivity and produce as much biomass as a tropical rainforest.
Thanks to a series of lucky events and happy coincidences, I spent 3 gorgeous, sunny days this past weekend exploring and learning in these coastal wonderlands.
It all began with a nondescript poster taped to the wall of the hostel that DukeEngage stayed at during our group trip to seaside. It was advertising a shoreline science workshop put on by Oregon Shores, a nonprofit that is involved with citizen science, advocacy, and outreach along the entire Oregon coast, from Clatsop down to Cape Ferrelo.
The first brick to fall in place was the fact that this workshop happened to fall on the weekend of August 2-3, the one weekend of the summer with no DukeEngage planned activity, aka the only time I would have conceivably been able to do something like this.
I was so intoxicated with this idea that I signed up and paid the (rather expensive) fee as soon as we got back to Portland, in my excitement bulldozing over the thorny logistics of getting out there and finding a place to stay.
I posted a request on craigslist rideshare and went to check out tent/hammock rental prices from the PSU outdoor program. Both of these paths led from nowhere to nowhere, so I emailed the coordinator of the shoreline science conference and she turned out to be a gold mine.
Through her, I got in touch with Allison Asbjornsen, Norwegian artist, wine enthusiast, and board member and president of Oregon Shores who splits her time between Portland and Netarts Bay and not only gave me a ride but also a room in her house for the whole weekend.
She picked me up in an old Mountaineer she bought for 1600 dollars that doesn’t lock and can’t really go faster than 50 mph. for the entire two hour ride up to coast we talked about everything from Tillamook dairy farms and the time she spent a summer working on her uncle’s Norwegian cargo ship to Thorns soccer and my interest in aquaculture.
The conference started the next day at 8am in Nehalem city hall’s “event room” for a morning lecture but then the rest of the day we spent outside, on the beach, soaking up the Pacific sun.
the lectures (both inside and outside) were led by Stewart Schultz, renowned marine ecologist who grew up on the Oregon coast and has been doing research and teaching for the past 30 years all over the country. He is now at the University of Zadar in Croatia teaching Botany, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Maritime Sciences. Not sure how he went from the Pacific Northwest to the Adriatic Sea but it seems like a good gig to me.
I hesitate to use the word “lecture”, since what we were doing was about as far removed from my experiences in the lecture halls of Gross Chem and Biosci as you could imagine.
Since this was a shoreline science workshop, each day was loosely based on a certain ecosystem, which dictated where we went and which organisms were talked about. Day 1 was rocky intertidal zones, Day 2 was sandy beaches, and Day 3 was estuaries/wetlands/ salt marshes/mudflats. Each day was incredible in its own way. The most fascinating information was the salt marsh day, the best location was the sandy beach day, and the most interesting creatures were found on the rocky intertidal day. The workshop would have been incomplete without any of those days.
If I had been learning about sea star wasting disease from a PowerPoint, guaranteed I would have been asleep in half an hour tops, along with the rest of the class. But learning about barnacles while standing right next to a rocky shelf covered in them with the salt spray in the air and gulls crying overhead is such an intoxicating and engaging learning environment that you can't help but soak up every little tidbit of information.
Stewart had an encyclopedic knowledge of Oregon coastal flora and fauna that was truly amazing to behold. This man could look at a desolate patch of mud and find about 30 little organisms, recite the scientific names for each one, and then then point out microscopic anatomical features that none of us could even see with a magnifier. he would pick up a little worm and describe its relationship with the seaweed strewn all over the beach (going off on a brief tangent about seaweed photosynthetic adaptations), mention that it can't survive anywhere except the Oregon coast, and then pick up an identical worm right next it and proceeded to inform us that this is an invasive from Japan and is outcompeting the normal worm because of the cilia lining the inside of its digestive tract. Even when we were given time to explore, I always stuck close to him because he turned even the most barren stretch of sand into a classroom teeming with life.
He was one of those people with a perfect professor voice, and encouraged everyone to participate by explaining relationships and then asking us to think about why these two organisms evolved that way. Why would the isopod lodge in only one side of the sand shrimp’s gill system? If all this invasive dune grass was removed and the dune were allowed to collapse back to its natural state what might happen to the delicate depression zones behind them? Why is there such a sharp boundary line in the intertidal zonation between the sea stars and the mussels?
He could then back up every fact with the grad student who discovered it, or the PhD candidate who spent 10 years researching it, their alma maters, and what their favorite breakfast cereal is. Seriously. Encyclopedic.
I learned about hermaphroditic barnacles, how to predict the tides based on phases of the moon, and discovered aggregate clone colonies of anemones whose competitive tendencies would put feuding lords in the Middle Ages to shame.
I can explain critical tide theory, which describes why there is such distinct zonation on coastal habitats. I learned to differentiate between invasive European Beach Grass and native American Dune Grass (sorry, still can’t remember the scientific names). I learned that in one species of marsh grass the male plants grow to normal size on their own, but if they are within a certain radial distance of the female plants, male stalks are only able to grow to ⅙ the normal height. Nature’s gender equality activists need to step up their game.
I was learning all of this next to a fascinating array of people. As far as age distribution goes, I was (predictably) the youngest. But then you have to travel through a couple more decades to reach the next youngest attendee, who was Allison at 65 years old. I’ve never been around old people in a learning environment like that, and quite frankly it was rather enjoyable. No one is afraid to ask questions or air opinions or make dirty jokes. There’s no weird alpha competition. Everyone is a lot calmer and I think it’s impossible for an older person to be awkward. Of course some people are more outspoken than others, but no one was really obnoxious. I became close friends with Trung, the lady who ran our seaside hostel, Jeremy, an engineer from Kansas who never wore shoes, Nancy who manages a watershed and considers clam digging to be her higher calling, and Marcus, an old guy who graduated from Duke Law in the Jurassic period (his own words). I learned almost as much from my new friends as I did from Stewart. Almost.
By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I was legitimately sad about leaving this new community that I had found, and I hope to stay in touch with some of the amazing people I met.
Meanwhile, the rocky intertidal zones and mudflats of the Pacific Northwest coastline are closer to Napoleon Dynamite; low budget, unexciting, a little strange and uncomfortable at times in a way that makes you just want to get up and leave the room. But not without value, as the millions of “Vote for Pedro” shirt sales can attest to. In fact, in one hectare (a football field by football field area of space) certain ecosystems of the Oregon shore, including salt marshes and estuaries, operate at the same level of productivity and produce as much biomass as a tropical rainforest.
Thanks to a series of lucky events and happy coincidences, I spent 3 gorgeous, sunny days this past weekend exploring and learning in these coastal wonderlands.
It all began with a nondescript poster taped to the wall of the hostel that DukeEngage stayed at during our group trip to seaside. It was advertising a shoreline science workshop put on by Oregon Shores, a nonprofit that is involved with citizen science, advocacy, and outreach along the entire Oregon coast, from Clatsop down to Cape Ferrelo.
The first brick to fall in place was the fact that this workshop happened to fall on the weekend of August 2-3, the one weekend of the summer with no DukeEngage planned activity, aka the only time I would have conceivably been able to do something like this.
I was so intoxicated with this idea that I signed up and paid the (rather expensive) fee as soon as we got back to Portland, in my excitement bulldozing over the thorny logistics of getting out there and finding a place to stay.
I posted a request on craigslist rideshare and went to check out tent/hammock rental prices from the PSU outdoor program. Both of these paths led from nowhere to nowhere, so I emailed the coordinator of the shoreline science conference and she turned out to be a gold mine.
Through her, I got in touch with Allison Asbjornsen, Norwegian artist, wine enthusiast, and board member and president of Oregon Shores who splits her time between Portland and Netarts Bay and not only gave me a ride but also a room in her house for the whole weekend.
She picked me up in an old Mountaineer she bought for 1600 dollars that doesn’t lock and can’t really go faster than 50 mph. for the entire two hour ride up to coast we talked about everything from Tillamook dairy farms and the time she spent a summer working on her uncle’s Norwegian cargo ship to Thorns soccer and my interest in aquaculture.
The conference started the next day at 8am in Nehalem city hall’s “event room” for a morning lecture but then the rest of the day we spent outside, on the beach, soaking up the Pacific sun.
the lectures (both inside and outside) were led by Stewart Schultz, renowned marine ecologist who grew up on the Oregon coast and has been doing research and teaching for the past 30 years all over the country. He is now at the University of Zadar in Croatia teaching Botany, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Maritime Sciences. Not sure how he went from the Pacific Northwest to the Adriatic Sea but it seems like a good gig to me.
I hesitate to use the word “lecture”, since what we were doing was about as far removed from my experiences in the lecture halls of Gross Chem and Biosci as you could imagine.
Since this was a shoreline science workshop, each day was loosely based on a certain ecosystem, which dictated where we went and which organisms were talked about. Day 1 was rocky intertidal zones, Day 2 was sandy beaches, and Day 3 was estuaries/wetlands/ salt marshes/mudflats. Each day was incredible in its own way. The most fascinating information was the salt marsh day, the best location was the sandy beach day, and the most interesting creatures were found on the rocky intertidal day. The workshop would have been incomplete without any of those days.
If I had been learning about sea star wasting disease from a PowerPoint, guaranteed I would have been asleep in half an hour tops, along with the rest of the class. But learning about barnacles while standing right next to a rocky shelf covered in them with the salt spray in the air and gulls crying overhead is such an intoxicating and engaging learning environment that you can't help but soak up every little tidbit of information.
Stewart had an encyclopedic knowledge of Oregon coastal flora and fauna that was truly amazing to behold. This man could look at a desolate patch of mud and find about 30 little organisms, recite the scientific names for each one, and then then point out microscopic anatomical features that none of us could even see with a magnifier. he would pick up a little worm and describe its relationship with the seaweed strewn all over the beach (going off on a brief tangent about seaweed photosynthetic adaptations), mention that it can't survive anywhere except the Oregon coast, and then pick up an identical worm right next it and proceeded to inform us that this is an invasive from Japan and is outcompeting the normal worm because of the cilia lining the inside of its digestive tract. Even when we were given time to explore, I always stuck close to him because he turned even the most barren stretch of sand into a classroom teeming with life.
He was one of those people with a perfect professor voice, and encouraged everyone to participate by explaining relationships and then asking us to think about why these two organisms evolved that way. Why would the isopod lodge in only one side of the sand shrimp’s gill system? If all this invasive dune grass was removed and the dune were allowed to collapse back to its natural state what might happen to the delicate depression zones behind them? Why is there such a sharp boundary line in the intertidal zonation between the sea stars and the mussels?
He could then back up every fact with the grad student who discovered it, or the PhD candidate who spent 10 years researching it, their alma maters, and what their favorite breakfast cereal is. Seriously. Encyclopedic.
I learned about hermaphroditic barnacles, how to predict the tides based on phases of the moon, and discovered aggregate clone colonies of anemones whose competitive tendencies would put feuding lords in the Middle Ages to shame.
I can explain critical tide theory, which describes why there is such distinct zonation on coastal habitats. I learned to differentiate between invasive European Beach Grass and native American Dune Grass (sorry, still can’t remember the scientific names). I learned that in one species of marsh grass the male plants grow to normal size on their own, but if they are within a certain radial distance of the female plants, male stalks are only able to grow to ⅙ the normal height. Nature’s gender equality activists need to step up their game.
I was learning all of this next to a fascinating array of people. As far as age distribution goes, I was (predictably) the youngest. But then you have to travel through a couple more decades to reach the next youngest attendee, who was Allison at 65 years old. I’ve never been around old people in a learning environment like that, and quite frankly it was rather enjoyable. No one is afraid to ask questions or air opinions or make dirty jokes. There’s no weird alpha competition. Everyone is a lot calmer and I think it’s impossible for an older person to be awkward. Of course some people are more outspoken than others, but no one was really obnoxious. I became close friends with Trung, the lady who ran our seaside hostel, Jeremy, an engineer from Kansas who never wore shoes, Nancy who manages a watershed and considers clam digging to be her higher calling, and Marcus, an old guy who graduated from Duke Law in the Jurassic period (his own words). I learned almost as much from my new friends as I did from Stewart. Almost.
By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I was legitimately sad about leaving this new community that I had found, and I hope to stay in touch with some of the amazing people I met.