Annual Meeting to Feature Overview of Oregon’s Ocean

Oceanographer Bill Peterson will address the Oregon Shores annual meeting on Nov. 7 in Lincoln City. Peterson will survey the State of Oregon's Ocean. His presentation will consider the current El Nino, changes in ocean conditions such as "The Blob"; climate change impacts such as ocean acidification, the effects of these changes on marine organisms from plankton and krill to Cassin’s auklets and sardines, and the resilience of local economies in the face of these challenges.

Marine ecologist Cynthia Trowbridge will also make a presentation on the State of the Beach, exploring the ecology of the driftline with special emphasis on what we've been seeing on the shore this year, from salps and tunicates to millions of by-the-wind sailors.

The annual meeting takes place in a unique venue, The Eventuary (560 S.W. Fleet St.),  from 1:30-5 p.m, followed by a reception. The event is free and open to all. (The official portion of the annual membership meeting will be held from 3:10-3:30.  Only Oregon Shores members can vote on board candidates and other matters, but non-members are welcome to sit in for this brief session.)

The event will also feature a second major speaker, soon to be named, plus short talks on Oregon Shores’ wide range of program activities, from marine reserves and citizen science to LNG and other land use battles.

Bill Peterson is a local boy, born in Vancouver, Washington, high school at South Salem and B.A. at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.  After receiving his Master’s degree at the University of Hawaii, he returned to Oregon and earned a Ph.D. at Oregon State University in Oceanography in 1980.  He left the Pacific Northwest for 15 years to work as an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (on Long Island) and at the University of Capetown as a Senior Research Officer.  Dr. Peterson joined NOAA in 1990, and after stints at Monterey Bay and in Washington, D.C. (where he was in charge of a major climate change and fisheries program) he considered himself lucky to get transferred to Newport, where he has been ever since “with no plans to go elsewhere other that visit places on my bucket list once I retire, which will be very soon.”

Dr. Peterson’s chief research interest is to study the effects of climate variability and change on zooplankton and pelagic fish populations (particularly juvenile salmonids) in the Northern California Current region.  But his talk at the annual meeting will take a wide view of the striking and perhaps troubling changes we are seeing in the Pacific Northwest’s nearshore ocean, and the global ocean beyond.

For more information about the annual meeting, contact Phillip Johnson, Oregon Shores’ executive director, at (503) 754-9303, phillip@oregonshores.org.