Charleston institute examines the sea
Have you ever seen a sea gull yawn?
Wallace Strom, a participant in the University In
stitute of Marine Biology at Charleston this summer,
says he has.
Strom, a professor from a Michigan community
college, is one of 100 students who studied gulls and other
marine life, conducted censuses of marine organisms,
and worked on environmental problems while attending
the Institute.
Strom figures he spent several dozen hours watching
sea gulls. He’s taking 120 color slides of gulls and other
marine life back to Michigan to show his students at
Alpena Community College. The professor says he came
to Charleston because he had heard so much about the
Universitv Institute.
Irene Harris, another Institute student, also ob
served gull behavior, focusing particularly on a nesting
colony near Bandon. Harris, who is about to begin
graduate work in zoology, points out that the summer
work helped her to get an idea about “what behavior is
like generally.”
The University Marine Biology Station is located
only a few feet from the bay at Charleston, so students
are able to watch marine life right on the grounds or
close by.
The Institute is particularly well suited to small
group projects by students, according to Paul Rudy,
director.
One summer class, called “Environmental
Projects,” was strictly a field course without formal
lectures. Members focused on pollution sources, water
duality and its biological implications.
W One group of students examined the effluent from a
local pulp mill and its effect on marine life.
The University’s Marine Station has offered sum
mer courses for more than 30 years. The 1972 session
continued this tradition with courses in invertebrate
zoology, physiology, environmental projects, biology of
fishes and marine birds and mammals. Individual
research projects and seminars were also offered.
The station is ideally situated for the study of marine
organisms as many different marine environments are
close to the laboratories. The Coos Bay estuary contains
interesting rock, mud, sand, eelgrass and piling com
munities. The open coast has an exceptionally rich rocky
intertidal area as well as long stretches of sandy
beaches. The laboratories are close to the harbor en
trance and station boats can collect open ocean
organisms within minutes of leaving the dock.
The station has about 85 acres of property along
Coos Bay at Coos Head where native vegetation and
animal life have been preserved as far as possible. The
INSTITUTE
OF
Director Paul Rudy
buildings are located on a tract on the bay side of the
property close to the post office and stores of Charleston,
a small fishing village. The station is eight miles from
Coos Bay and eight from North Bend.
Coos Bay and the surrounding region are of par
ticular biological interest. The foothills of the Coast
Range are forested with Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and
Port Orford cedar, with maple and alder along the
streams.
These trees and the luxuriant undergrowth are
typical associations of the coastal belt of the Pacific
Northwest. A number of coastal lakes bordered by ac
tive or ancient sand dunes are readily accessible.
The region abounds with varied bird life, including
many aquatic species which breed in the vicinity or are
visitors during their migrations. Small mammals are
abundant and deer are seen occasionally. A colony ol sea
lions lives on nearby Shell Island.
Coos Bay and its inlets afford a wide range of
aquatic environments with differences in salinity,
temperature and character of the bottom, which are
reflected in the life of these waters. The Coos River and
numerous streams emptying into Coos Bay support an
additional varied fish fauna and are spawning grounds
for several migratory fishes.
The ocean frontage between Coos Head and Cape
Arago is rugged, with rocky promontories, small bays,
and long sandy beaches. Across from Coos Head are the
long ocean and bay beaches of North Spit with their
different faunas and floras. The ancient life of the region
is represented in the rocky exposures along the ocean
front and in coal-bearing rocks dating as far back as the
Eocene.
Open to students this spring
Marine biology station to offer first regular quarter
University students this year will get a
chance to study man and his en
I'.ronmental problems for an entire term
} an informal lecture-field situation 120
miles from the campus.
The occasion will be the University’s
first regular quarter, other than summer
session, at its Marine Biology station at
Charleston, where a full term of multi
disciplinary courses will be offered this
spring.
The classes, which will be heavily field
oriented, will take advantage of the
surrounding environment, according to
Paul Rudy, director of the Oregon Institute
of Marine Biology at Charleston.
“This region is a natural field station for
observing various social problems,” ex
plains Rudy, pointing to social
environmental problems reflected in high
unemployment, poor land usage and
declining fish and timber stocks.
The curriculum has been planned so that
a student may carry a full term of in
tegrated coursework, including
geography, biology, landscape ar
chitecture and sociology. The courses are
designed to be taken together, to com
plement one another and center around the
field experience.
Rudy and the other four faculty who will
teach the spring quarter say that they are
looking forward to an intense learning
experience for students and staff.
Faculty and students both will live on the
Institute grounds, which are only a few
hundred feet from the ocean channel and
the boat basin at Charleston.
Rudy explains that tne spring quarter
was prompted partly by the success of the
informal learning atmosphere present
during summer institutes at the marine
binlogv station
The Institute's buildings provide dor
mitories. dining nail. Kucnen, classrooms
.md laboratories
Enrollment will be limited by the
available dormitory space to 60, and the
quota is expected to be filled this fall.
Students may apply for the quarter
through the departments offering courses.
Material describing the offerings will be
available at registration.
Hoorn and board charges will be $30 a
week Students accompanied by depen
dents must arrange for housing off the
Institute grounds.
The University faculty at Charleston this
spring will he Rudy, who is an associate
professor of biology; Robert Terwilliger,
assistant professor of biology and
assistant director of the Institute; Jerome
Diethelm, associate professor of ar
chitecture and chairman of the depart
ment of Landscape Architecture, Ronald
Faich, assistant professor of sociology;
and William Loy, assistant professor of
geography.
The courses are as follows:
Geography 407, Coastal Problems: 3
hours. Diethelm, Faich, Loy, Rudy,
Terwilliger A seminar designed to
coordinate the course offerings I>ocal
representatives of industry and elected
officials will participate.
Geography 481, Geomorphology. 3
hours. Loy. A systematic study of land
lorming processes in the physical land
scape with emphasis on coastal processes.
Maps and air photos will be primary tools
of geomorphic investigations.
Biology 478, Marine Ecology, 3 hours.
Rudy. Terwilliger An examination of
interrelations between organisms and
physical environment with emphasis on
man's modifications of the coastal en
\ ironment
Landscape 589. Advanced Landscape
Design 1-10 hours Deithelm Advanced
problems in landscape architecture with
emphasis on coastal problems and in
tegration with architecture
Summer session students
Landscape Architecture 407-507,
Seminar in Planning and landscape
Architecture. 3 hours. Diethelm A
seminar designed lo inform non majors of
ihe methods and ideas in planning and
landscape- architecture
Sociology :J2#» Quantitative Methods in
Sucjnlngy :t hours Faich A course on
construction and interpretation of tables
and graphs, descriptive statistics,
measures oi association and contingency
relationships, basic ideas of probability
and elementary statistical inference
applied to non expert mental research.
Sociology 407-507, Seminar in
Sociological Methods. 3 hours Faich.
Seminar designed to discuss the ideas and
methods of sociology and their relation
ships to other disciplines and to the coastal
zone