Newport [OR] News-Times

March 19, 2008

By Terry Dillman

Newport is poised to become a focal point in a major scientific effort to learn more about and from the world's oceans.

Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) and the university's Newport-based Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) have long envisioned the city as a logical base of operations for ocean observations off Oregon's shores. As part of an effort to engage city and county leaders, business owners, and other community members on what such a vision might mean for the local economy and the requirements to make it a reality, researchers from OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) held a "coffee table dialogue" during a March 13 forum in the HMSC auditorium.

Co-sponsored by the Port of Newport and the Yaquina Bay Economic Foundation, the forum was what HMSC Director George Boehlert called the first in a series of discussions about vital marine and coastal issues.

"Ocean observation is something that's happening around the world - at least the wet part of the world - and it will have a big impact on what happens in coastal communities," said Boehlert. "Yaquina Bay is a natural site for these activities. It has a natural geographic advantage for access to the ocean, the scientific expertise of OSU, Hatfield, and the state and federal agencies in Newport, and public support for the development of enhanced port infrastructure."

This opening forum focused on "the rationale, the methods, the vessels, and the communities key to the success of using new technologies for observing the oceans," describing what ocean observation is, the networks of cabled moorings, ships, and data-gleaning instruments needed for national and international initiatives already underway to study and understand oceans. It featured input from Jack Barth, Ed Dever, and Bob Collier from COAS, along with Pete Zerr, Hatfield's marine superintendent, and Daryl Swensen, the center's marine technician superintendent.

A deeper look

The continental shelf off the coast of Newport is already part of a more extensive Pacific Northwest coastal observatory under the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). In August 2007, Oregon State University officials announced the school would receive $20.6 million during the next six years to lead the OOI Pacific Northwest component, with the possibility of an additional $29 million during the ensuing five years to continue the operation.

The regional effort is part of a 10-year, $331.5-million global research project.

Coordinated by the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI) - a consortium of top oceanographic research entities that manage large-scale, global research programs in marine geology, geophysics, and oceanography - the OOI will create a multi-tiered ocean observatory on coastal, regional, and global scales connected via a system-wide computer network. OSU joined Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the proposal "to develop, install, and operate the combined coastal and global observatories." According to OSU officials, each partner "will contribute scientific and engineering expertise to develop a range of innovative moored buoys, cabled nodes, and autonomous vehicles that will provide users with data in real time or near real time, and allow users to remotely control their instruments and construct virtual observatories specifically tailored to their scientific needs."

The effort, they note, will "transform scientific understanding" of oceans.

Woods Hole will provide the overall administrative leadership and engineering for the project and set up a separate coastal observatory on the shelf break off the Northeast coast. That and the OSU-led Pacific Northwest observatory will study coastal process and monitor changes in coastal systems.

Those coastal arrays, scientists say, aim at understanding complex coastal ecosystems and their critical roles in the ecology and biogeochemistry of the oceans, coastal hazards such as harmful algae blooms and storms, and the impact of climate change on the coastal ocean.

The Pacific Northwest coastal observatory would place a series of permanent moorings off the Northwest coast - part of it off the Newport coast - along with a network of programmable undersea gliders to patrol near-shore waters and collect a variety of data and transmit it to onshore laboratories.

Mark Abbott, COAS dean, said the area off the central Oregon coast has a significant impact on regional and national climate, and while scientists have studied it "at length" through various methods, until now they have lacked the infrastructure to monitor conditions on an on-going basis.

OOI will provide it.

Collier, a COAS professor, is the deputy project manager, and Barth is the project scientist. Pending approval by JOI and the National Science Foundation would allow construction on permanent moorings and glider deployments to begin. Instruments aboard the moorings would measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen content, the water's optical properties, chlorophyll levels, nutrient levels, and the speed and direction of currents. Each mooring site would also feature a surface buoy to monitor the atmosphere.

California dreamin'

Barth and Collier said this region is significant to scientists because of the complex interactions of wind, currents, and terrain. It features what is known as the California Current System, which comprises just one percent of the oceanic surface area, but yields 20 percent of the world's wild caught seafood.

Oregon is also situated where changes in the atmospheric jet stream have a major impact on local weather conditions and the ocean's response to them.

The coastal observatory would help monitor and understand the complex interactions at play along the coast every day. Collier called it "a dynamic area that is the interface between the open Pacific Ocean and the human-populated coast." Barth said the Heceta Bank just south of the planned mooring array is "one of the most important locations along the coast because it deflects the waters flowing from the north and creates a quiet pool of water that serves as an incubator for the phytoplankton that feed the rich marine food web found there."

Changing ocean conditions could have provided the triggers for recent hypoxic events and harmful algal blooms.

The ability to make long-term measurements in the coastal and global oceans will ultimately provide researchers with an opportunity to "truly understand" ocean variability, hazards, and climate change in response to both natural events and human activities.

Economic benefits

Ed Dever said they could have an ocean observatory network in place off the Newport coast "within five years." And while much work and many challenges lie ahead, the project could provide an economic boost in terms of jobs through the use of existing maritime services, and creating new ancillary businesses to serve specific needs arising from the venture.

"Ocean observing is an actively growing enterprise, critical to science and society," Collier noted. "We already have active programs throughout the region. We are in a good position in Newport and OSU to contribute to and take advantage of this opportunity."

"This will create new opportunities for smart people to come up with new projects and generate new ideas and products," said George Boehlert. "It will stimulate a lot more science and a lot more education."

OOI would also provide public outreach and educational value, with scientific data compiled at the different sites available not only to scientists, but to the public in real-time on the Internet. By providing real-time, continuous access to the sea through the Internet, project leaders say OOI will transform ocean research and education. Everyone with a connection to the Web - including students, teachers, decision-makers, and the general public - will have access to these undersea networks.

Boehlert said Newport's fishing industry actively cooperates with scientific endeavors, and officials from the Port of Newport and the Yaquina Bay Economic Foundation, a non-profit economic development group, back the notion that Newport can render a diverse range of public and private services to support ocean observing activities in a way that is mutually beneficial.

"We will continue to engage marine users and work with the community throughout this process," Collier noted. "We want to minimize the impact on other marine user activities, and maximize the benefits for all."

Terry Dillman is assistant editor of the News-Times. He can be reached at 265-8571 ext. 225, or terrydillman@newportnewstimes.com.