Orange
on blue
Historic slides
coming soon
COAST WEEKEND
NORTH COAST • 3A
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2015
142nd YEAR, No. 157
ONE DOLLAR
OPB TELLS THE STORY OF ASTORIA
Gearhart
Council
says no
to annex
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ordinances OK’d
By NANCY MCCARTHY
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Donated by Steve Forrester of the Daily Astorian — Clatsop County Historical Society
*($5+$57 ² $ SURSRVDO WR
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the Gearhart city limits was turned
down by the Gearhart City Council
Wednesday night.
The council also approved ordi-
nances regulating fences and mari-
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that regulates how many days recre-
ational vehicles can be parked at a
residence was tabled temporarily.
The annexation was requested by
Michael R. Fraser on behalf of his
mother, Barbara R. Fraser. The three
parcels are bounded by Del Rey
Photographic print mounted on card stock. View of Astoria looking east. ca. 1890 from about Fourth and Exchange streets. Flavel House
is in the foreground.
See GEARHART, Page 10A
Free public
screening
Friday
$UH/1*
plants
doomed?
By KYLE SPURR
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Energy supply,
need questioned
F
itting in the highs and lows
of Astoria’s two century-old
history into a half-hour doc-
umentary posed a challenge for Or-
egon Public Broadcasting producer
Eric Cain.
Cain decided last fall he was up
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settlement west of the Rockies.
The result is OPB’s latest “Or-
egon Experience” documentary,
“Astoria.” It will air at 9 p.m. Mon-
day on OBP TV. In advance of
the premiere, the Columbia River
Maritime Museum in Astoria will
host a free, public screening at 7
p.m. Friday. Cain, who wrote and
produced the documentary, will an-
swer questions after the screening
Friday.
“It’s our treatment of the Astoria
story,” Cain said. “It’s an overview,
granted, but we tried to stick as
much stuff as we could and have a
story that makes sense.”
The new documentary begins
By CHELSEA DAVIS
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Courtesy of Clatsop County Historical
Society
Courtesy of Columbia River Maritime Museum
A logger family.
with the establishment of Astoria
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York City businessman John Jacob
Astor, the namesake of the coastal
town.
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lished “Astoria: John Jacob Astor
and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pa-
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is interviewed in the documentary
and details Astor’s failed plans for
a fur trading empire.
Cain said he couldn’t spent too
much time on the founding of As-
toria because there are not many
photographs that could be used in
the broadcast. Overall, Cain said
he was able to collect more than
600 photographs and some video
from the Clatsop County Histor-
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Museum and museums in Port-
land, which resulted in quite a few
images for a half hour show, he
said.
Liisa Penner, Clatsop County
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Cain spent a great deal of time in
the Heritage Museum collecting
photographs and information.
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John Jacob
lithograph.
Astor
portrait
photographs of a donkey engine,
a steam-powered logging engine
used in the mid-1800s that caught
Cain’s attention.
“He was in here to get photos
and he got a lot on a huge variety
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From the founding of Asto-
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which set off a logging boom. As-
toria shipped logs and lumber from
the lower Columbia region to mar-
kets around the world.
See ASTORIA, Page 10A
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waits for Jordan Cove to get the green
light or the ax, there’s a larger dilemma
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global scale, and what if export termi-
nals are doomed before they’re even
built?
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ministration says the nation’s shale gas
plays will continue to produce enough
natural gas to meet American need and
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through 2040 and beyond.
Veresen Inc., Jordan Cove’s parent
company based in Calgary, Alberta,
holds the same foresight.
“I get asked a lot nowadays if the low
crude (oil) prices will have an impact
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See LNG, Page 10A
The Blob: 7DVWHRIWKLQJVWRFRPHIRUPLJUDWRU\¿VK
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By KATIE WILSON
(20HGLD*URXS
Pygmy killer whales and
tropical birds spotted off the
coast of California; massive
squid, rarely seen farther
north than Oregon, cruising
through water in Alaska along
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tuna; sea turtles washing up
on the Long Beach (Wash.)
Peninsula before Christmas,
disoriented and too cold.
The planet’s hottest year
on record was also a year of
strange sightings on the West
Coast.
Though the sightings have
more to do with wind patterns
and a surge of warm water
moving through the area than
with climate change, scien-
tists say 2014 was a taste of
what is likely to come as cli-
mate change reshapes the Pa-
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animals, its salmon.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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“The Blob” is a giant pool of warm water that formed in the North Pacific and had a par-
the Blob, actually.
In hot water
ticularly noticeable influence on Pacific Northwest weather last year. Out in the ocean,
warmer-water species are being observed. Cold-water species like salmon are likely to
be negatively impacted as this warming becomes a long-term issue.
“It’s a very technical term,”
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Bizarre wind patterns
named “the blob.”
helped form this thick mass
of warm water off the West
Coast back in 2013. When
winter hit, the blob persisted,
along with its associated wind
patterns, warming nearby
waters, drawing warm water
species to the area and even
affecting the weather. Com-
munities at the mouth of the
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summer and a mild winter.
Temperatures in the blob
were approximately 3 degrees
C warmer than normal. A re-
cent study by Canadian scien-
tist Frank A. Whitney, not yet
published, found lower pro-
ductivity of plankton in the
blob’s hot waters last spring
and summer. These micro-
scopic plants are an important
indicator of ocean health,
“This is basically bad news
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on,” Bond said about the blob.
“In particular, the class that
would be going to sea next
spring.”
Right now, those salmon are
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their freshwater habitat. But the
conditions they encounter in
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crucial when it comes to deter-
mining how many will survive
and come back to be caught by
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miliar streams to spawn.
See BLOB, Page 7A