Pacific Expedition Featured on Local Oregon News - Oceana
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September 5, 2013

Pacific Expedition Featured on Local Oregon News

 

Great news from our Pacific expedition team! On September 3 the local Portland station KGW featured the expedition on the evening news.

This August, Oceana set sail to document deep sea corals and sponges off the rugged Oregon Coast using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) outfitted with high-definition underwater cameras. The areas they explored are places that we proposed be protected from bottom trawling, which destroys important habitat on the sea floor.  

“There’s been this long standing debate in the scientific community and among fishery managers about whether or not these sponges and corals we are seeing are really habitat, or do they just happen to be there,” said Ben Enticknap, a senior scientist with Oceana, in the article. “This video shows definitively that these are habitat.”

The expedition wrapped up last week, but you can still catch up on their discoveries by reading the expedition diaries.