November 2000: Pam Rogers, Editor
Dziak Wins Presidential Early Career Award (from NOAA News Online)
An early interest in fossils turned into a life's work in geosciences for Dr. Robert P. Dziak, one of the winners of the Presidential Early Career Award. Dziak, chief seismologist at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Newport, Oregon, was one of sixty individuals who were awarded the nation's highest award for young scientists.
"Dr. Dziak has contributed greatly to our understanding of deep ocean volcanic and thermal activity and the role they may play in the global ocean's physical, chemical and biological environment," said Dr. David Evans, NOAA assistant administrator. "We in NOAA Research are very proud that his work has been recognized with this prestigious honor."
A native of Illinois, Dziak holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois and a master's from the University of Memphis. Three years ago, he earned his doctorate from Oregon State University, where he currently holds a joint appointment and is an assistant professor.
"There is no doubt that Dr. Dziak has a bright scientific career ahead of him," said Dr. Eddie Bernard, director of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. "We are fortunate to have a scientist of Dr. Dziak's talent and insight. He sets his goals high and he has the intelligence and commitment to achieve them."
Dziak's research into how underwater earthquakes move along the seafloor and their effect on the colonies of microbes that live there has opened new windows into this previously little-known field.
"Submarine volcanic eruptions provide windows into the biosphere and Dr. Dziak's research helps his NOAA colleagues, and collaborating scientists all over the world, know where and when that window opens," said Dr. Stephen Hammond, leader of PMEL's Ocean Environmental Research Division, where Dr. Dziak works.
Hammond added that Dziak is particularly skilled at recognizing the elusive, but specific, sounds that submarine volcanoes emit during eruption. By using both the U.S. Navy and NOAA's deep water hydrophone listening systems, Dziak and his colleagues can find the location of the eruption and measure its chemical, physical, and biological consequences.
Although submarine eruptions are the most common such events on earth, the NOAA acoustics team, of which Dziak is a key member, made it possible to study their impacts on the ocean for the first time ever in the summer of 1993, Hammond noted.
One of the youngest members of the team, 37-year-old Dziak is an accomplished researcher who is nationally recognized for the results he regularly publishes in major scientific journals, the most recent being in the Sept. 14 issue of Nature.
(For photo and the complete text of the article, go to http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s517.htm)
Visitor Center Honors Their Stars
The Visitor Center threw a party for their volunteers on Sunday, October 8 and a good time was had by all. Recognizing that the Visitor Center would be hard-pressed to get by without their "star" performers, the volunteers, the theme of the event was "You Are the Stars."
Linda VanderBurgh organized the event and the HMSC Bookstore supplied most of the prizes and favors. The Abode Resort in Yachats donated a $60 gift certificate and Mo's Restaurants donated a $30 gift certificate. South Beach State Park manager Dave Henderson donated the use of the park's meeting yurt.
Visitor Center staff all played a role in the event: Bill Hanshumaker barbecued tuna, Craig Toll cooked corn on the cob, Sylvia Pauly led the games, including pin-the-hat-on-the-octopus (developed by Kathy Dobson) and the rest of the food was prepared by Terri Nogler and Linda.
About 75 volunteers actively participate in the running of the Visitor Center, performing such valuable tasks as interpreting exhibits, clerking in the bookstore, feeding fish and monitoring water quality of the tanks, leading estuary and dock walks and "back wing" tours, maintaining the volunteer library and assisting with school groups. In 1999, this dedicated volunteer corps contributed a total of 7970 hours toward the operation of the Visitor Center.
COAS Launches New Research Vessel
Oregon State University launched a research vessel in August honoring Native American tradition and Oregon's natural environment while focusing on current ocean ecology. The 54-foot Elakha will be based at the university's Mark O. Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and operated by OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
While the Elakha will be available for a wide variety of projects, the vessel's focus will be assisting OSU researchers Bruce Menge and Jane Lubchenco in studies of Oregon coastal marine systems. Menge and Lubchenco are the university's Wayne and Gladys Valley Professors of Marine Biology and Lubchenco is an OSU Distinguished Professor of Zoology.The researchers are part of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans: A Long-Term Ecological Consortium (PISCO), which brings together researchers from OSU, Stanford University, University of California at Santa Cruz and University of California at Santa Barbara. A major focus of the consortium is the study of linkages between the fish, invertebrates and algae within marine communities and near-shore oceanographic conditions along Oregon and California coasts. A key question is to determine where the early life stages come from and where they go, researchers said.
The Elakha, which cost about $500,000, will replace OSU's Sacajawea research vessel, which has been in use since 1969. Funding came as part of an $18 million grant by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, which helped establish the PISCO program. Additional funds were provided by the university's Research Office and by the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
"This new vessel will be larger, faster, stabler, safer and will dramatically enhance ecological and oceanographic research capabilities in the near-shore ocean," Menge said. "It will open new vistas for OSU, both in research and instruction." The Elakha will have a laboratory area, berthing for four, and a small galley, said Fred Jones, marine superintendent for the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Scientific capabilities include a 2,000-pound capacity A-frame and winch, and a flow-through water sampling system. The Elakha, powered by a single, 600-horsepower diesel engine, will have a range of about 575 miles. Endurance will be a maximum of 72 hours, Jones said. "We expect to use it primarily out of Newport with a range along the Oregon coast, including the Columbia River and other Oregon estuaries, as well as offshore to about 30 nautical miles (35 statute miles)."
Elakha is the Chinook trading language word for sea otter. The name was selected after talks with researchers and representatives of area Native Americans. Chinook trading language is a mixture of sounds and phrases used to ease trade among Northwest tribes not sharing a common language.The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private family foundation established in 1964. It provides grants in several major program areas, including science, population, conservation, arts and children and community.
ODFW Support Staff Has New Look
In the last year or so the front office of ODFW has had almost a complete turnover. The current staff are Lori Parker, Office Manager; Sue DeBit, Purchasing Specialist; Rebecca Fuller, Word Processing Specialist; and Kathy Krohn, Public Service Representative. Rebecca has the seniority in the office, having been there four years. She is a native Oregonian and worked at ODWF in Corvallis and at OSU in the Microbiology Department before coming to Newport. She speaks French and Arabic, which she learned when she went to school in Beirut, Lebanon.
Kathy and Sue are the most recent additions. Kathy is also a native Oregonian, but she has traveled quite a bit with her Coast Guard husband. He was Chief of the Depoe Bay Station and also worked on the Great Lakes, where they practiced ice boat rescues. Kathy worked at the Central Lincoln PUD for seven years. She and her husband enjoy dune buggy rides. Sue has lived in Newport ten years and is a member of Sweet Adelines. She and her husband have three children who have shared her musical ability, plus her youngest daughter, Sara, is into every sport available in middle school.
Lori hails from Rhode Island and is married to Steve Parker, also of ODFW. Before they came to Newport, they were at the La Grande ODFW office. Before coming to ODFW, Lori worked for NMFS Northwest in the NAL building, so she really knows her way around. She enjoys backpacking, camping, needlepoint, baking and singing.
Dave Mellinger - Listening to Whales
This spring David Mellinger joined the CIMRS/NOAA Hydrothermal Vents group in the field of bioacoustics. He is seeking ways to analyze animal sounds and provide tools for biologists to use in tracking and monitoring whale populations. Taking advantage of the SOSUS system of hydrophones and other portable hydrophones, Dave studies the recorded low frequency sounds to pick out the distinctive whale calls. As illustrated by the spectrograph above of a right whale call, he has developed a call recognition computer program that will sort through months of sound recordings and tag only those sounds that match certain specifications. Then he must go through and individually check each tagged sound to see whether it is from a right whale and not a humpback whale, which shares a similar-sounding call.
Each species of whale has a different type of call or calls. Blue whales, the largest of all whales, have a very low frequency call, while right whales have six to eight different general types of calls, and humpbacks (the famous singing whales) have dozens of sounds that they can combine into a song which changes during the seasons. The lowest-frequency calls cannot be heard by the human ear, so spectrograms are used to visualize the sound. Using acoustic principles, Dave can narrow down the actual location of the calling whale, especially if there is more than one hydrophone in the vicinity. He can also analyze the echoes to determine distance from the source.
Dave came into bioacoustics in a roundabout way. Earning his bachelor's in math from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was originally interested in modeling how our brains process sound and how we separate sources of sound. He went on to Stanford University where he earned his Ph.D. in musical acoustics. A friend shared an article about the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University that was working on bird and whale calls. He called up the researcher mentioned in the article and that led to a post-doc at Cornell doing bioacoustics with whales. That in turn led to work at MBARI in Monterey, California, where he monitored harbor seal sounds and polished up his program for picking out particular sounds from months of tapes.
He and his wife, Deborah Bella, were attracted to Oregon State University because of its dual-career couple policy. Deborah has a post-doc with the Linus Pauling Institute, working on the metabolism and bioregulation of Vitamin E. Dave works at the HMSC about three days a week and at home in Corvallis the other two. Now awaiting the arrival of their first child within a month, they have enjoyed outdoor activities such as kayaking, rock climbing, hiking and bird watching.
Tony D'Andrea Gets Second Year as NRC Post-Doc
Tony D'Andrea was recently renewed for a second year as a National Research Council post-doctoral research at the U.S. EPA in Newport. Tony works on burrowing shrimp and their interaction with sediment chemistry and nutrient recycling. Working with Ted DeWitt and Pete Eldridge, he is continuing his doctoral research interest while at SUNY, Stony Brook. His dissertation was on organic matter flux and reactivity in a South Carolina sand flat, done while on a fellowship at the Baruch Marine Lab in Columbia, South Carolina.
His earlier degrees were from Jacksonville University, Florida, in marine science and an M.S. in Marine Science from University of South Carolina. Burrowing shrimp are a far cry from his childhood interest in sharks. For fun, Tony enjoys hiking, ultimate frisbee, mountain biking, the outdoors, home brewing and gourmet cooking.
Oyster Talk Announced
Hatfield Marine Science Visitor Center sponsors Wednesday, November 29 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Hennings Auditorium Oyster Farming in Oregon: Itıs Growing Again John Faudskar, OSU Tillamook County Marine Extension Agent Oyster production in Oregon went from a high of about 130,000 gallons in 1950 to a low of 18,000 gallons in 1976. Gradually, the industry has been rebounding. Some reasons for the fall and rise, and present day methods of growing one of Oregonıs most succulent agricultural crops, will be presented and discussed.
Personnel Notes