CLATSKANIE, Ore — State environmental regulators approved a key permit for a controversial refinery project near Clatskanie this month. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality had previously denied water quality permit applications submitted by Houston-based NXT Clean Fuels, also referred to as NEXT, in 2021 and 2022 “due to insufficient information to evaluate the permit…
OREGON COAST — A new report spells out exactly how much Oregon’s kelp forests have dwindled over the past decade or so — and the picture is bleak. According to a status report released by the Oregon Kelp Alliance in November, nearly 900 acres of bull kelp forest has essentially disappeared off the Oregon Coast…
Gary Longo was looking for what he thought would be small genetic differences across a single species of small, ocean-dwelling fish: Pacific sardine. But as he examined the early data, he suddenly got a sinking feeling. He was looking at what appeared to be two completely different species. Pacific sardines are small but ecologically important…
CANNON BEACH, Ore. — The puffins are early risers, but so is Tim Halloran. For the past 12 years, he has spent most summer mornings — and many sunsets — with his binoculars aimed at a tufted puffin colony on Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock. Minute by minute, over a series of two hour shifts, Halloran…
ASTORIA, Ore. — One afternoon in July, motorists traveling on the Astoria Bridge from Washington to Oregon could have counted 13 dead cormorants on the roadside before they were halfway across. For several years now, the number of dead birds has acted as an informal indicator of the growing colony nesting on supporting structures below….
The last time Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock Awareness Program recorded a sighting of a sunflower sea star was in 2019. They are one of the largest sea stars in the world, measuring up to one meter across, with as many as 20 arms. Voracious predators, they feed on urchins, fish and even birds. For visitors…
CANNON BEACH — Someone is stealing mussels off the iconic Haystack Rock. Bald patches on the rock and nearby boulders have appeared after nighttime and evening low tides — after staff and volunteers with the city-run Haystack Rock Awareness Program have gone home. In addition to the bare spots, volunteers and city staff have found…
CLATSOP COUNTY — Normally, the Wildlife Center of the North Coast would be drowning in ducklings right now. The Olney-based wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center sees several hundred a year and late spring is always an especially busy time. But avian influenza is on the move across the nation. Millions of birds have died from…
As fish swim around in the ocean, they leave pieces of themselves behind. “At sort of the least technical level: It’s slime. It’s skin. It’s poop,” said Andrew “Ole” Shelton, a researcher with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “It’s, you know, all the things you don’t really want to think about being in…
It has been nearly a decade since researchers and beachcombers watched sea stars seemingly melt away in front of them. Beginning in 2013 and 2014, a mysterious disease decimated sea star populations on the West Coast. The cause of sea star wasting syndrome, which hit some 23 different species of sea stars, remains a scientific…