The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) has persisted in Oregon and Washington coastal estuaries since the late 1990s. A strong year class arrived during the 1998 El Niño, but numbers decreased and remained below 1 per trap per day until the arrival of the 2015-2016 El Niño. Since then, numbers...
Devaleraea mollis (Pacific Dulse) is becoming a popular food for human consumption. Previously, Pacific Dulse has been used as a nutrient source for cultured abalone species, with some historical food use by indigenous peoples, while the closely related Atlantic dulse (Palmaria palmata) has a long-documented history of use in cuisine...
It is well documented that microplastics and semi-synthetic particles (<5 mm) pervade the marine environment, with their ingestion by marine fauna eliciting global concern. While fishes exposed to microparticles in a laboratory setting have exhibited both sub-lethal and lethal effects, the diversity in material, morphology, and size of these contaminants...
Standard larval Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) rearing systems can be described as either static or continuous flow. While rearing oyster larvae in static cultures can be a low-cost and simple method, static systems require significant husbandry effort, floorspace and can produce highly variable results due to environmental variance among cultures....
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are used in ecosystem-based management (EBM) to increase the abundance and biomass of targeted species and protect their ecosystems by restricting certain human activities. Marine reserves (i.e. no-take MPAs) aim to achieve this by prohibiting harvest in the area. While MPAs are currently evaluated through assessments...
Rockfishes (Sebastes) are important species for commercial and recreational fishing, as well as evolutionary and ecological research. It can be impractical to identify the sex of rockfishes using visual identification or lethal dissection, and the sex-determination systems of these species have not been studied extensively. The aim of this research...
Dungeness crab (Cancer magister) is an important commercial species along the west coast of North America, and its population dynamics are highly influenced by interactions between environmental variability and early life history distribution. However, the distribution of the early larvae stages of Dungeness crab offshore is poorly known. To fill...
Aquaculture is a continuously growing industry, but rising problems are disease and antibiotic resistance. A common disease-causing pathogen in oyster aquaculture is Vibrio coralliilyticus (Vcor). Vcor infection of oyster larvae causes near 100% mortality within 48 hours, which is devastating to oyster hatcheries. One potential method of controlling Vcor outbreaks...
Oysters are a large part of the American aquaculture market, and the oyster farming industry was valued at over 1 billion dollars in 2021. However, oyster farmers often face issues surrounding the mortality rates of their stock. One cause of this is infections caused by Vibrio coralliilyticus (Vcor), a bacterium...
Based on current trends both pesticide and plastic production are expected to continue to rise in the coming decade. A growing global population coupled with the effects of climate change are the main drivers of increased pesticide use. Throughout this dissertation pesticides refer to herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Plastic production...
Drones, or unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS), have become increasingly accessible and a widely used tool across disciplines. Off-the-shelf drones have, for instance, popularized and advanced wildlife research by providing a privileged birds’-eye view for collecting high-resolution imagery for morphometric and behavioral sampling, which was otherwise costly or impractical. Biologically meaningful...
The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) has persisted in Oregon and Washington coastal estuaries since the late 1990s. A strong year class arrived during the 1998 El Niño, but numbers decreased and remained below 1 per trap per day until the arrival of the 2015-2016 El Niño. Since then, numbers...
The Oregon Sea Grant Visitor Center at Hatfield Marine Science Center attracts 150,000 visitors a year and does not require an admission fee. Surveying visitors, 39% of all people indicated that half or more of their reason for coming to the Oregon coast was to visit the Visitor Center.
The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) has persisted in Oregon and Washington coastal estuaries since the late 1990s. A strong year class arrived in the Davidson Current during the 1998 El Niño, but numbers decreased and remained below 1 per trap per day until the arrival of the 2015-2016 El...
Most marine fishes experience high rates of mortality during their early life history stages with far reaching consequences for adult population dynamics. Within a few weeks of hatching, relatively small changes in larval growth and mortality rates can lead to orders of magnitude variability in year-class strength. Growth and survival...
The distribution of mobile marine predators often reflects underlying dynamic ecological processes. The geographical focus of this PhD is the South Taranaki Bight (STB) of New Zealand, where wind-driven coastal upwelling generates productivity and prey to support a blue whale foraging ground. The STB is also New Zealand’s most industrial...
The adaptive capacity of marine calcifiers to ocean acidification (OA) is a topic of great interest to evolutionary biologists and ecologists. Previous studies have provided evidence to suggest that larval resilience to high pCO2 seawater for these species is a trait with a genetic basis and variability in natural populations....
Dramatic declines of the native northeast Pacific mud shrimp, Upogebia pugettensis over the last three decades have occurred in response to intense infestations by the Asian bopyrid isopod parasite, Orthione griffenis, that was introduced in the 1980s. We report herein the arrival of the Asian mud shrimp, Upogebia major, in...
Population genetic techniques are now preeminent in differentiating wild populations. Natural resource managers rely on them in their efforts to restore viable populations of fish and wildlife. Overfishing adversely impacted Yelloweye Rockfish (Sebastes ruberrimus) on the U.S. West Coast in the late 20th century. Management actions included shutting down the...
Cephalopods are increasingly viewed as sentient animals that require the same welfare consideration as their vertebrate counterparts. In this study, an observational welfare assessment tool developed by the EU Directive was revised to be species-specific for the giant Pacific octopus, Enteroctopus dofleini. This E. dofleini health and welfare assessment tool...
Dynamic marine environments can shape complex spatial and temporal patterns in the population connectivity of marine species, and this is often exemplified in species with long larval phases. Here, we used a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach to examine fine-scale spatial and temporal genomic variation among Dungeness crab Cancer magister larval recruits...
The California Current Ecosystem (CCE) is a dynamic marine ecosystem from which many socioeconomically important fisheries species are harvested. Here, a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach was used to examine genomic variation in an early life stage (megalopae) of the Dungeness crab (Cancer magister), which constitutes the most valuable single-species commercial fishery...
Passive acoustic monitoring is a valuable tool for observing the status of marine environments. Comparisons of underwater soundscapes over temporal and spatial scales can provide data to inform marine conservation efforts, including protection of threatened and endangered species. This dissertation utilizes passive acoustic data collected via a broadly spaced array...
Skin condition assessment of wildlife can provide insight into individual and population health. Yet, logistics can limit skin condition assessment of large whales. We developed a standardized, quantitative protocol using photographs to assess skin condition of blue whales in New Zealand, and demonstrate the value gained by testing hypotheses, documenting...
Marine heat waves are forecasted to increase in frequency and intensity under future climate scenarios, but little is known about the impact of these events on the one of the most commonly used proxies of ocean temperature - foraminiferal assemblages. This research explores the planktic foraminifera community along the Newport...
Fisheries management that is based on quantitative assessment has commonly relied on estimating the unfished biomass of a fished stock to compare current and historical population size. Developing predictive models for this requires many years of catch and abundance data. Smaller, new, or mainly recreational fisheries may not have the...
Marine heatwaves have become more common over the past several years. The 2014-2015 ‘warm blob’ had profound effects on marine ecosystems in the Northeast Pacific. Given the particular habitat needs of Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) we wanted to examine the impacts of the heatwave on Chinook depth distribution. We examined...
The phenotypic identification of sex in Sebastes rockfish is difficult and often impractical from a management perspective, and the genetic basis of sex determination in the genus is currently uncertain. We tested a previously developed sex identifi- cation polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR–RFLP) assay in eight species...
A critical seasonal event for anadromous Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) is the time at which adults migrate from the ocean to breed in freshwater. We investigated whether allelic variation at the circadian rhythm genes, OtsClock1a and OtsClock1b, underlies genetic control of migration timing among 42 populations in North America. We...
Arctic freshwater ecosystems have been profoundly affected by climate change. Given that the Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) is often the only fish species inhabiting these ecosystems, it represents a valuable model for studying the impacts of climate change on species life‐history diversity and adaptability. Using a genotyping‐by‐se‐ quencing approach, we...
Little is known about intraspecific variation within the deacon rockfish (Sebastes di‐ aconus), a recently described species found in the northeast Pacific Ocean. We in‐ vestigated population structure among fish sampled from two nearshore reefs (Siletz Reef and Seal Rock) and one offshore site (Stonewall Bank) within a <50‐km2 area...
The California Current Ecosystem (CCE) is a dynamic marine ecosystem from which many socioeconomically important fisheries species are harvested. Here, a genotyping- by-sequencing (GBS) approach was used to examine genomic variation in an early life stage (megalopae) of the Dungeness crab (Cancer magister), which constitutes the most valuable single-species commercial...
Advances in mobile autonomous vehicles for oceanographic sensing provide new opportunities for passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals. Acoustically equipped mobile autonomous platforms, including gliders, deep-water profiling floats, and drifting surface buoys can survey for a variety of marine mammal species over intermediate spatiotemporal scales. Additionally, such mobile platforms may...
Beginning in the late 1960s and throughout the past decade, unusual, perhaps neoplastic, large cells with rather consistent characteristics were described in mussels, clams, and oysters from several bays in the United States and the United Kingdom. The large, characteristic cells are thought by many workers to be abnormal leukocytes...
Survival of marine fishes during their early life history stage is tightly related to prey availability and predation pressure. Yet, our understanding of how individual larvae to entire assemblages are constrained by these factors is limited. We integrated biological sampling of larval fishes with fine-scale in situ imaging to relate...
Ocean acidification (OA) has had significant negative effects on oyster populations on the west coast of North America over the past decade. Many studies have focused on the physiological challenges experienced by young oyster larvae in high pCO₂/low pH seawater with reduced aragonite saturation state (Ωarag), which is characteristic of...
In 2014, Oregon State University (OSU) initiated a multi-year project to study humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrations in the North Pacific Ocean using satellite tracking technology in combination with genetic and photo-identification (photo-ID) analyses. The study is highly relevant to management, given the need for new information arising from the...
Ocean acidification (OA) is the result of increasing concentrations of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, leading to a suite of alterations to specific parameters of ocean chemistry, which can negatively impact many marine organisms and ecosystems. Understanding how to measure and monitor the chemistry of OA will require specialized education...
The Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas) is one of the most economically and ecologically significant shellfish species worldwide. In the Pacific Northwest United States (PNW), the sustainability oyster stocks is increasingly threatened by ocean acidification (OA), which has had significant negative effects on the aquaculture industry in this region over the...
This dataset was produced as a result of experiments conducted with simple and alginate complex particles that were used to evaluate feeding in California yellowtail and white seabass post larvae. Retention data was collected from a series of retention trials whereby particles were suspended in seawater for various lengths of...
Vibrio coralliilyticus (Vcor) is a bacterial pathogen that is well adapted to shellfish hatcheries and is very pathogenic to the larvae of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas. Vcor has been associated with several large scale larval mortality events in the Pacific Northwest that interrupt the supply of seed oysters available...
Recognisable debris from the Great Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 began arriving on the coasts of Oregon and Washington, USA in June 2012. This debris often carried fouling Japanese marine algae, and there was concern that these species might recruit and invade northeast Pacific shores. From June 2012...
This lesson introduces students to the concepts of salinity and density. In this lesson students create and test a hypothesis about how the distance from the mouth of an estuary influences salinity levels.
Part of the Hatfield Marine Science Center's Sea Lion exhibit.This public exhibit is about the projected shift in temperature that could be associated with significant movements in the small fishes that make up much of the diet of California sea lions. If they prey moves, perhaps the sea lions will...
The Augmented Reality Sandbox was developed by the UC Davis W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES, http://www.keckcaves.org), supported by the
National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL 1114663.
Hansen, Gayle I. 1989. Nori farming in Anacortes, Washington: a political dilemma. A poster presented at the 13th International Seaweed Symposium (Vancouver, British Columbia) and the 4th Northwest Algal Symposium (Rosario Beach, Washington). In 1987, the off-shore cultivation of the nutritious seaweed, nori or Porphyra (Pyropia), had been studied intensely...