Three events on the horizon
Thor’s Well
A series of events from the Cape Perpetua Collaborative aims to help people learn more about the area’s past, become involved with its present and help make plans the future.
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On Saturday, Nov. 6, CoastWatch Volunteer Coordinator Jesse Jones and CPC Communications Coordinator Tara DuBois will help kick off the king tides season with a history of king tides and the Oregon King Tides Project. This interactive virtual session will focus on sites in and near Cape Perpetua and other nearby central coast sites that need documenting.
Jones is a lifelong Oregonian and has devoted her career to the watersheds of Oregon’s North Coast.
She has managed large and small habitat restoration projects, engaged countless property owners in land conservation and worked alongside youth of all ages.
She is a naturalist and was a private guide for the Haystack Rock Awareness Program, chair of the Surfrider Foundation North Coast chapter and chair of the non-profit Pelican Science, which she helped found. She is also a collage artist, poet and bossa nova musician.
The presentation begins at 10 am and is the first in 2021-22 series of virtual educational presentations hosted by the Cape Perpetua Collaborative, held via Zoom most Saturdays through December.
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Join like-minded beach lovers for a marine debris cleanup at Cape Cove Beach on Tuesday, Nov. 9. This project is great for anyone who would like to spend an hour or two contributing to science and cleaning up beaches around the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve.
The event will cover about 100 yards of Cape Cove Beach, which includes flat sand, wood debris, cobble rocks and lava rock. Beach debris is usually found in rocky and woody areas.
After the survey, the finds will be sorted and documented, and the plastic items will be kept for re-use in various projects. The coordinator will email participants with a breakdown of the days finds.
The group will meet at the Cove Beach trailhead at 9 am. Heading south on Highway 101, it is the first pull-off on the right after the Campground/Day Use area. Heading north on 101, it’s the second pull-off on the left after the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center.
If you have your own bucket and gloves bring them. Bags and gloves will be available to use if needed.
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The annual Young Scientist Webinar Series presents talks from graduate students and postdocs sharing details about ocean research being completed in the area.
On Tuesday, Nov 9, Hannah Wellman, Ph.D., will present “Marine Mammals Before Extirpation: Using Archaeology to Understand Native American Use of Sea Otters in Oregon Prior to European Contact.”
When Euro-American explorers and traders made contact with Indigenous communities on the Northwest Coast in the 1700s, they encountered and over-exploited marine mammal resources. Some populations rebounded under state and federal laws protecting them from further exploitation, while others, like the locally extinct Oregon sea otter, never recovered.
Sea otters are the focus of recent conservation efforts led by diverse stakeholders, yet little systematic study of them in pre-contact Oregon has occurred.
Wellman’s work explores ancestral tribal use of sea otters and human-sea otter relationships in Oregon prior to European contact, and also addresses the historical ecology of the Oregon sea otter through ancient DNA analysis of archaeological sea otter remains.
Her research interests include past environments, human-animal and human-environment relationships and ecological sovereignty. She is a rising Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow.
The presentation will begin via Zoom at 5:30 pm.
The series will continue on the second Tuesday of each month through April.
For more information about any of these events, go to capeperpetuacollaborative.org.