Oregon's Marine Reserves

Any photographs without a photo credit are courtesy of ODFW's Marine Reserves Program.

Oregon is ground zero for ocean acidification impacts--the water chemistry off our coast is already changing and has changed dramatically. For a glimpse into the science, the impacts and the information gaps behind ocean acidification in Oregon, check out the video below.

Ocean Acidification - Changing Waters On The Oregon Coast

MR MPA boundaries

OR's Territorial Sea

<li>Legislatively established: 2009<li>Monitoring began: 2010</li><li>Harvest restrictions began: Jan. 1, 2012</li><li>MR size: 3 sq. km (1.2 sq. mi)</li></li>

This week marks the 10 year anniversary of Oregon's decision to pilot a system of marine reserves. On July 28, 2009, Gov. Kulongoski signed HB 3013 1, which directed the implementation of two pilot marine reserves at Redfish Rocks and Otter Rock.

A Brief History of Oregon's Marine Reserves

In the summer of 2006, Oregon coastal waters experienced severe low-oxygen conditions that caused mass die-offs of iconic Oregon marine species like Dungeness crabs and sea stars. While low-oxygen (hypoxic) conditions occur naturally in deep offshore waters, a new trend was becoming apparent in shallower coastal waters. Once rare and localized, low-oxygen conditions were becoming more common in Oregon’s nearshore. Around the same time the Whiskey Creek Shellfish hatchery, which provides oyster larvae to regional shellfish growers, suffered a total production failure. At first the cause was unknown but it soon became clear that changing ocean conditions were the culprit. Ocean water pumped into the facility was too acidic for oyster larvae to form shells.&nbsp;

<li>Legislatively established: 2012<li>Monitoring began: 2012</li><li>Harvest restrictions began: Jan. 1, 2014</li><li>MR size: 25 sq. km (9.7 sq. mi.)</li><li>MPA size: 60 sq. km (23.1 sq. mi.)</li></li>

Dr. Francis Chan, an ecologist at OSU, has been studying the effects of hypoxia (low-oxygen conditions) in Cape Perpetua since 2002, when he started working with ODFW to track the seasonal onset of these events. Cape Perpetua - home to rocky reefs that are important habitats for rockfish and a diverse suite of benthic invertebrates - is also an area that is particularly perceptible to hypoxia risk.

Microplastics were found in 20% of the samples collected during the 2018 pilot study, which also included the Cape Perpetua comparison area. The project has since expanded to include two other marine reserve comparison areas, and analyses are ongoing. The research will continue to provide important information about this emerging issue in Oregon’s nearshore.&nbsp;

One of Drs. Grorud-Colvert and Sponaugle’s research goals is to better understand population replenishment. For managers to perform stock assessments that inform sustainable harvest, it’s necessary to estimate the number of fish at various life stages. Fisheries data provide information for adults, but fishery-independent data are needed to provide information about under-studied earlier life stages. Since 2014, the team of OSU researchers and graduate students, scientists from ODFW’s Marine Reserves Program, and divers from the Oregon Coast Aquarium have been providing this information by monitoring juvenile recruitment at Redfish Rocks.

They deployed acoustic receiver arrays around a rocky reef in the Cape Falcon marine reserve and at a sandy-bottom site near the Columbia River mouth. They caught Dungeness crabs, recorded information about size and sex, and tagged healthy specimens at each site. 

Drs. Henkel and Roegner would like to express their appreciation to Bob and Michelle Eder who generously established the Eder Family Dungeness Crab Research Fund that supported this exciting study.

All twenty crabs released in the sandy-bottom site left the main detection area within a week, but the twenty Cape Falcon crabs on the rocky reef remained longer. While four left within a week, the other 16 stayed 25.5 days on average, and one stayed for 109 days! The findings support Dr. Henkel’s original hypothesis, and the study produced other valuable information as well. Once the crabs left the main acoustic receiver array, their movements could only be tracked if they were caught by fishermen who reported the data. One intrepid crab was caught two different times and traveled over 90 miles total!

Two OSU marine ecologists, Drs. Kirsten Grorud-Colvert and Su Sponaugle, are conducting research at Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve to learn more about these early life stages. Adult fishes may stay within a relatively small home range (this varies by species), but larval fishes can go only where ocean currents take them. Once born or hatched, larval fishes are so small that they drift with ocean currents as plankton. If they survive this phase without becoming another organism’s dinner, they eventually settle out in the nearshore in a process called recruitment.

One way they’re doing it is by examining the presence and abundance of microplastics in black rockfish off the Oregon Coast.&nbsp;ODFW and a crew of volunteer anglers collected adult rockfish during hook and line surveys. The samples were collected from the comparison area outside of the Cascade Head Marine Reserve in 2018, and a charter company provided adult rockfish samples from unprotected nearshore areas off the Newport coast. 

Dr. Brander and her students then dissected the fish to look for ingested microplastics. The lab procedure to separate microplastics from organic material requires a number of steps that must be meticulously performed. The lab uses vigorous control standards to account for plastics in the lab environment that could contaminate samples.&nbsp;

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Learn more about Oregon's Marine Reserves

And what might they find? These are among the first ARMS have been deployed off Oregon’s coast, and it’s entirely possible that species never observed in Oregon’s coastal waters may be identified. If the ARMS project expands to include other marine reserves in Oregon, this method could provide one of the most comprehensive datasets on benthic invertebrates ever collected in Oregon’s nearshore, allowing scientists to assemble a DNA reference library. Ultimately, a robust DNA reference library could allow managers and scientists to identify the animals that have been present in an area simply by taking a water sample, rapidly providing valuable information about biodiversity in marine habitats.

<li>Legislatively established: 2012<li>Monitoring began: 2012</li><li>Harvest restrictions began: Jan. 1, 2014</li><li>MR size: 37 sq. km (14.3 sq. mi.)</li><li>MPA size: 49 sq. km (19 sq. mi)</li></li>

Otter Rock is Oregon’s smallest marine reserve, and so here we’ll focus our attention on some of the smaller organisms that call Oregon’s marine reserves home – benthic invertebrates, or organisms that live on the sea floor. Despite invertebrates’ impressive numbers and variety, these organisms are often less studied than other marine species. ODFW uses remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and SCUBA surveys to study larger invertebrates that inhabit Oregon’s marine reserves, but neither of these methods is particularly good at studying cryptic species (distinct species that look alike) or species that prefer to conceal themselves in small, rocky spaces.&nbsp;

Changes in ocean chemistry, such as acidification and dissolved oxygen, can have widespread effects on marine life. Given the cultural and economic significance of seafood in Oregon, high profile events like these pushed fishing communities and scientists like Dr. Chan to become leaders in globally-important research regarding the impacts of hypoxia and the progression of ocean acidification. Dr. Chan and ODFW’s existing research partnership provided the capacity to further expand research in response to these emerging issues.

Oregon's marine reserves are areas in the ocean that are dedicated to conservation and scientific research. 5 Sites: The Cape Falcon, Cascade Head, Otter Rock, Cape Perpetua, and Redfish Rocks marine reserves are each named after local natural landmarks. Within the marine reserves all removal of marine life is prohibited, as is ocean development.

Oregon Marine Reserves - Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

Once extracted, suspected plastics are verified using micro-Fournier transform infrared spectroscopy (aka a really cool method that provides information about an item’s molecular structure). The method produces a spectrum (kind of like a fingerprint) for each sample. This “fingerprint” can then be compared to known materials to determine whether it’s plastic or not!

Dr. Chan and ODFW initially placed sensors to measure dissolved oxygen, productivity and ocean currents in what is now the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve in 2003, and pH and pCO2 sensors were added in 2011. Once Cape Perpetua became a marine reserve, ecological monitoring efforts that began in 2012 allowed this already-productive partnership to grow. The continued collaboration has allowed Dr. Chan and ODFW to explore the ecological effects of low-oxygen events. A new picture has emerged of a dynamic community where hypoxia can move fish off preferred habitats, although they return when oxygen conditions improve. For less mobile organisms such as sea cucumbers and sea stars, acute low-oxygen events have longer lasting impacts with populations taking years to recover.

The marine reserve at Cape Perpetua has the longest continuous record of nearshore dissolved oxygen changes of any marine reserve along the US West Coast, helping researchers and user communities detect and understand the pace and scope of ocean changes. Cape Perpetua now stands as a sentinel site for informing managers and the public of the changing state of our coastal oceans.

If you live in Oregon, chances are you know how important Dungeness crab is – it’s delicious and economically important! For the last 20 years, the species has had an average annual commercial catch of 17 million pounds. Like the other marine reserves in Oregon, scientific research happening at Oregon’s northernmost marine reserve is shedding light on Oregon’s nearshore and the organisms that live there.

Monitoring occurs continuously from roughly April to October so that the team can learn more about the timing of recruitment and how environmental conditions affect this process. Based on data collected over six settlement seasons (2014-2019) at Redfish Rocks, it appears that cabezon recruitment pulses occur earlier than the rockfish species studied. Cabezon recruitment also appears to be more consistent from year to year, whereas other species like tiger rockfish seem to be more cyclical. Continued data collection at Redfish Rocks will allow the research team a unique opportunity to study how patterns are affected by ocean conditions, which can help managers sustain healthy adult populations for future generations.

Marine reserve - an area within Oregon’s Territorial Sea or adjacent rocky intertidal area that is protected from all extractive activities, including the removal or disturbance of living and non-living marine resources, except as necessary for monitoring or research to evaluate reserve condition, effectiveness, or impact of stressors

Redfish Rocks - one of the first marine reserves designated in Oregon - is characterized by rocky reef habitat that makes it an ideal home for many fish species that are important to Oregon’s recreational and commercial fisheries. While scientists know quite a bit about the adult life stage of species like cabezon and rockfish, less is known about the larval and juvenile stages. 

<li>Legislatively established: 2009<li>Monitoring began: 2010</li><li>Harvest restrictions began: Jan. 1, 2012</li><li>MR size: 7 sq. km (2.7 sq. mi.)</li><li>MPA size: 13 sq. km (5 sq. mi.)</li></li>

Microplastics in the ocean (particles less than 5 mm) are an emerging issue of concern, and there’s currently not enough data to determine the health effects of microplastics - either on the organisms that ingest them initially or on the humans who later eat affected seafood. Dr. Susanne Brander and her team at OSU are working to change that.&nbsp;

Nine stacked plates create crevices to simulate the complex 3D habitat that exists on the ocean floor, and once the hotels are successfully placed (easier said than done), organisms will settle into the nooks and crannies over time. In the summer of 2019, three ARMS were placed in Otter Rock Marine Reserve, along with another three in the associated comparison area. The ARMS will stay in place for at least 1-3 years before divers retrieve them and inventory the guests.&nbsp;

Marine reserve goal - Protect and sustain a system of fewer than ten marine reserves in Oregon's Territorial Sea to conserve marine habitats and biodiversity; provide a framework for scientific research and effectiveness monitoring; and avoid significant adverse social and economic impacts on ocean users and communities

<li>Legislatively established: 2012<li>Monitoring began: 2014</li><li>Harvest restrictions began: Jan. 1, 2016</li><li>MR size: 32 sq. km (12.4 sq. miles)</li><li>MPA size: 20 sq. km (7.7 sq. miles)</li></li>

As ubiquitous as Dungeness crab is on the dinner table, there are still some things we don’t know - and that’s where researchers like Dr. Sarah Henkel at Oregon State University come in. She’s been working with ODFW, NOAA, and local fishermen to better understand habitat used by Dungeness crab. As you might imagine, it’s pretty difficult to study a species that spends its life cycle in the water, so creative approaches and a little risk taking are in order.

So what other methods might help round out the picture of invertebrate diversity? ODFW consulted with scientist and diver Dr. Aaron Galloway’s team at UO’s Institute of Marine Biology to set up Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) - more affectionately known as invertebrate hotels – in a pilot study at Otter Rock Marine Reserve.

Based on data that’s currently available, it appears that there’s a shortage of prey to support the number of crabs landed. The fishery usually places pots in sandy bottom areas, so much of the research on crab habitat comes from these sandy bottom regions. Dr. Henkel hypothesized that crabs may be less mobile in other areas like rocky reefs that could provide more prey. To test this hypothesis, Dr. Henkel and her NOAA collaborator, Dr. Curtis Roegner, compared crab movement in two different habitats – sandy bottom and rocky reef.

Source: Ocean Policy Advisory Council's <a href="https://oregonmarinereserves.com/content/uploads/2016/02/OPAC_Marine-Reserves-Policy-Recommendations-2008.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Oregon Marine Reserve Policy Recommendations (2008)</a>