A3
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2021
Nurses: ‘It is extraordinary what they do’
Continued from Page A1
The school district hired
medical instructional assis-
tants at each school to assist
with the school nurses’
duties during the day.
“It’s certainly a chal-
lenge, but there’s lots of
support from the district
and we all work together as
a team,” Johnson said.
The constant com-
munication with parents
has been key to keeping
schools open to in-person
classes.
“I talk with parents con-
stantly, pretty much every
day,” Johnson said. “There
is always somebody that
doesn’t feel good, or we
have to follow up because
(a student) hasn’t been at
school … Overall, most
families are pretty respon-
sible about keeping kids
home and calling to tell us
what is going on.”
‘Responsible for
hundreds of patients’
They
also
work
closely with the Clat-
sop County Public H ealth
D epartment . Along with
weekly meetings to give
schools a chance to ask
questions,
the
health
department provides a
retired school nurse that
they can call at any point
during the week.
By following the guid-
ance and protocols , John-
son and Brown will often
send several sick students
home throughout the day in
order to deter any spread of
Continued from Page A1
Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian
School nurse Tara Johnson stands at the entrance to a gym that has been repurposed as a
lunch room where students all face the same direction at Astor Elementary School.
the virus .
“When we think about
infrastructure and ratios,
and staffi ng shortages, we
tend to go to clinics and
hospitals,” Margo Lalich,
the county’s interim public
health director, said during
the news conference. “But
when you really think
about it, our school nurses
aren’t responsible for two,
three, four or fi ve patients.
T hey’re responsible for
hundreds of patients every
single day.
“It is extraordinary
what they do, particularly
in extraordinary times like
this, and that we actually
do as well as we do is just
remarkable.”
Students sit on social distancing markers during a music class
at Astor Elementary School.
Squid: ‘This is a dynamic resource and it could grow’
Continued from Page A1
In general, demand for
market squid has been high.
Fishermen landed more than
32 million pounds in the
United States in 2019 for a
value of about $16.4 million,
according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s fi sheries
database.
Market squid are short-
lived and, even without the
pressures of fi shing, the pop-
ulation replaces itself each
year, according to NOAA
Fisheries.
“As a result, market squid
populations can handle a rel-
atively high amount of fi sh-
ing pressure,” the agency
concluded.
Most of Oregon’s land-
ings have come to Coos Bay,
Newport and Winchester
Bay. Among the few Ore-
gon fi shermen who have
started to participate in the
local fi shery, there is a strong
desire to maintain it as just
that: local.
But many of the boats are
from farther afi eld, seine ves-
sels from California, Wash-
ington state and Alaska that
faced downturns in the Cal-
ifornia market squid fi sh-
ery and Alaska’s her-
ring and salmon fi sheries
and were looking for new
opportunities.
As many as 40 vessels
participated in Oregon’s
market squid fi shery last year
and 32 participated this year.
Murphy: Has
been working
since she was 8
That’s more than the fi sh-
ery can support, Mulkey and
others believe. Troy Buell,
the fi shery management pro-
gram leader with the Ore-
gon Department of Fish and
Wildlife, has heard that a bet-
ter vessel range might be 20
to 30 boats.
“This is a dynamic
resource and it could grow
in the future,” Buell told the
panel on Friday. “It seems to
be more robust now than it
has in the past.”
“There could be a day
where a bigger fl eet could be
supported,” he added, “but
that’s pretty hypothetical at
this point.”
Mulkey thinks the sweet
spot might be closer to 15 or
20 boats.
He sees little room for the
larger operations more typ-
ical in California, where a
boat might be able to sit on
the fi shing grounds for days,
attracting squid with fi sh-
ing lights, while other boats
associated with the vessel
take deliveries to buyers.
Spawning grounds
In Oregon, the spawning
grounds can be very small
and appear to be focused
more in certain areas.
One large light boat could
monopolize a fi shing ground,
Mulkey argues.
For Josh Whaley, a fi sh-
erman based in Brookings,
there is a defi nite desire to
fi nd ways to “keep most of
the fi shery here.”
Local fi shermen also won-
der how profi table the fi shery
really is to participants com-
ing from elsewhere.
Mulkey might only land
squid two or three days in a
month, but he is close to the
fi shing grounds and he burns
far less fuel in a summer than
he did when he was going
after shrimp.
For Whaley, market squid
has worked as a bridge fi sh-
ery between the end of the
Dungeness crab season and
the beginning of the shrimp
season. The boat Whaley
operates, the Miss Emily,
fi shes for Da Yang Seafood,
in Astoria, and the processor
encouraged Whaley to enter
the market squid fi shery.
There was good money to be
made, the processor said.
It is beginning to pencil
out now, Whaley said. Still,
the fi shery remains supple-
mental for him, not a staple,
not yet.
Mulkey has made mar-
ket squid a much larger part
of his business plan. So far,
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he feels like the huge initial
investment he had to make to
outfi t a boat for the fi shery —
around half a million dollars
— has been worth it. Despite
the many unknowns, he is
optimistic about the future of
Oregon’s market squid .
“I feel like there’s been
squid here the entire time,”
Mulkey said. “They just
weren’t being harvested.”
Seated at the center of
an endless fl ow of informa-
tion, she has gotten to know
the community in a way few
have the chance.
That knowledge has a
dark side.
Working at the sheriff ’s
offi ce means putting a face
to the people who turn up
in the reports, including the
victims.
Early on in her time there,
a man struck a woman with
his car downtown. He was
arrested for driving under
the infl uence of intoxicants
and went to prison.
After the incident, the
dead woman’s family came
into the offi ce to pick up
her eff ects and saw her pic-
ture on the front page of the
newspaper.
“And all of a sudden,
they just start scream-
ing, ‘That’s her!’ ‘That’s
our daughter!’” Murphy
remembered. “And that just
sent chills down me.”
These were not charac-
ters in a crime story, but real
people whose lives were
damaged .
Another guy who had
gotten a DUII had to lose
his concealed handgun
license . He came into the
sheriff ’s offi ce and dropped
it off . Then he went up into
the hills and killed himself.
His widow showed up to
retrieve his belongings. She
was nice and pleasant, Mur-
phy recalled. Then Mur-
phy saw her minutes later in
the freezer section of Safe-
way in Astoria and realized
she had yet to learn how to
switch from talking to vic-
tims in a professional set-
ting to making conversation
with them in public.
“I think we were both
surprised to see each other,
and weren’t really sure what
to say,” she said.
The hardest report she
has had to proofread was
about a lady whose young
daughter had been killed by
the family Rottweiler. Mur-
phy had a daughter around
that same age. Her supervi-
sor asked her if she needed
help fi nishing the report.
Murphy declined. “But it
was hard,” she said.
The job, she said, “does
have that emotional toll on
you.”
Murphy
has
been
involved in public ser-
vice since she was young.
She served in the U.S.
Coast Guard for about a
decade, one of the fi rst
women stationed at Tilla-
mook Bay. She met her hus-
band, Jay, there in the early
1980s. They now live in
Brownsmead.
Her career at the sher-
iff ’s offi ce began as a part-
time gig under Sheriff John
Raichl at the substation in
Svensen, where she orga-
nized community events
like the bicycle rodeos —
a safety fair that teaches lit-
tle bicyclists how to ride
and older ones how to navi-
gate traffi c — and the Every
15 Minutes program, an
anti-drunken driving eff ort
aimed at high schoolers.
Murphy’s husband is on
the sheriff ’s offi ce’s Under-
water Recovery Team, and
her son was once a cadet at
the agency.
Murphy has worked
since she was 8, when she
sold spudnuts — pota-
to-based donuts — door
to door. She has worked in
occupational health and for
the U.S. Census Bureau.
Along the way, she has
made time to travel on
cruise ships and has seen
about 30 countries.
When it comes to
careers, she said, “No mat-
ter what you do, fi nd some-
thing you enjoy.”
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