ABOVE: Community Services Consortium youth crew members and OSU researchers pick salmon smolts, smelt and shrimp out of seine net at Governor Patterson State Park south of Waldport. The CSC crew is helping OSU scientist Jose Marrin Jarrin research the role sandy beach surf zones play in habitat for young salmon. TOP: OSU researcher Jose Marrin Jarrin will examine the stomach contents of a juvenile chinook salmon to determine what the smolts eat in the surf. (Photos by Larry Coonrod)

CSC work crews helping graduate student with chinook salmon project



By Larry Coonrod

Of the News-Times



The first shafts of sunlight are just waking up the beach when six wetsuit clad figures drag a seining net to the edge of the surf at Governor Patterson State Park south of Waldport. For the next few hours, the team will pull the net from chest deep water in the surf back onto the beach to catch juvenile chinook salmon.

For OSU graduate student Jose Marrin Jarrin, the results are part of his doctoral thesis on the role sandy beach surf zones play as habitat for young salmon. For the three Community Services Consortium work crew members, it’s a chance to learn science and job skills while earning money.

“It’s an environment where they get to do something amazing, learn about science and give back to the community,” said CSC crew leader Chelsea Stover.

Jose will examine the stomach contents of the young chinook Stover’s crew catches to see what, if anything the smolts are eating in the surf.

Stover splits her six-person crew into two teams, alternating days they do the surf sampling. Some mornings they’re up at 3 a.m. to travel to the sampling site. Today, Stover explains to her team - Devin Roberts, 15, of Newport; Sarjenka Parks, 16, of Toledo and Tyler Archer, 17 of Waldport - the trick to keeping the net positioned on the sandy bottom in the churning surf.

“Always keep your eyes on the waves,” she cautions them. “Nobody has to do anything they aren’t comfortable with.”

“I’m not too fond of the water,” Parks says before gamely taking her turn on a corner of the net.

As soon as the net is back on the beach, everyone is down on their hands and knees picking through the seaweed. Every “tow” of the net produces plenty of slender surf smelt, but the chinooks remain elusive. Stover and Marrin Jarrin take a timeout for a little impromptu teaching about marine biology after the tows. But not for long - the team works fast and furiously as it moves down the beach, trying to land the 15 salmon needed before the low tide turns.

“Sampling on sandy beaches is both physically intensive and expensive. Having the CSC crews has allowed us to expand the number of places and the number of days we sample,” Marrin Jarrin said. “The crews are always well motivated and eager to learn. I don’t know if we would have made it the last two years without them.”

This is the second summer Stover, a senior studying biology with a marine science emphasis at OSU, has led a crew.

“When I started, I thought I was just going to supervise a couple high schoolers and be like ‘do this, do that,’” Stover said. “I had no idea what a huge impact I could have on these kids’ lives. This job has really made me figure out what I want to do.”

After graduating, Stover hopes to teach science youth enrichment programs.

“As much as I love teaching the science, and I do, I’m a total nerd. To me it’s watching the kids transform from either a shy or not confident person over eight weeks. It’s just wonderful building the relationships with them. It makes getting up at 2:30 in the morning worth it every time,” Stover said.

The Midcoast Watershed Council works closely with the Community Services Consortium to find and fund natural resource projects.

Youth hired for the projects are paid minimum wage and work between 20 and 40 hours a week on assignments ranging from seining salmon, trail building, capturing mud shrimp for research in Yaquina Bay, to sampling fish muscle samples in the dune lakes with the U.S. Geological Service.

“We try to diversify what every crew is doing so they just don’t build trails or dig blackberries,” said MWC education coordinator Virginia Tardaewether.

Much of the funding for the youth projects comes through the Oregon Youth Conservation Corp. Demand for natural resources youth crews is greater than the money available.

“We have lots of projects. We could have five more crews very easily with all the work we have to do,” Tardaewether said.

Community Services Consortium offers the jobs training program to underserved and disadvantaged youth. Tardaewether said the crews work six to eight weeks in the summer.

Last year, funding was available for fall and winter projects, “which is good because you can do restoration work in the winter that you can’t do in the summer,” Tardaewether said. “You can’t plant trees in the middle of summer and expect them to survive.”

Midcoast Water Council doesn’t yet know if grant funding is going to available for natural resource projects this winter, but plans to apply if it is.



Reporter Larry Coonrod can be reached at 541-265-8571 ext. 211 or larry@newportnewstimes.com.



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