OSU’s Hatfield Center to host virtual Marine Science Day April 9

Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center will host a virtual Marine Science Day Saturday, April 9, that will include a live shark dissection and a talk about a rare whale sighting off the coast of Oregon.

The annual free event, a showcase of the diverse marine research occurring at Hatfield, will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. virtually for the second year. The theme for this year’s Science Day is “Local Science, Global Impacts,” and the event will include animal interactions and research talks.

The event will kick off with a keynote address, “A Mystery Whale Uncovered off the Coast of Oregon,” by Lisa Ballance, director of the Marine Mammal Institute in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. Ballance will speak about the rare sighting of a pair of Hubb’s beaked whales during a 2021 research cruise off the coast of Oregon.

Among the other scheduled activities are:

A live broadcast of a shark dissection by Taylor Chapple, an assistant professor and principal investigator with the Big Fish Lab, where he studies sharks and other large marine predators.

“Genetics: How to give a whale a PCR test,” a talk by Debbie Steel, senior faculty research assistant in the Cetacean Conservation Genomics Lab.

“Think it, build it, sink it: Creating tools for marine science,” a talk by Drummond Biles, manager of the Innovation Lab.

Live animal interactions featuring sea anemones, sea cucumbers and tidepool sculpin, led by marine educators Lindsay Carroll and Cait Goodwin.

Marine Science Day is free and open to the public and advance registration is not required. To attend or learn more, visit the event website: https://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/marine-science-day-2022.