On a cool and still May morning, students from Oregon Coast Community College’s spring term Principles of Biology class walked past the familiar chorus of sea lions on Newport’s bayfront and climbed onto Oregon State University’s research vessel, the 84-foot R/V Pacific Storm.
The class was participating in Oregon Sea Grant’s STEM at Sea program, which gives rural high school and community college classes the opportunity to go to sea with scientists to collect data for research projects.
“They're learning a little bit about the marine environment, but this really gives them an opportunity to see research in action and actually serve as part of the science party,” said Tracy Crews, the associate director of education for Oregon Sea Grant. “So, they will be out there helping to collect the data and sort through the samples.”
On this particular day, students collected seafloor sediment samples at the PacWave South site, located about seven miles offshore directly west of Newport.
“It's really that hands-on component,” Crews said.
PacWave is not yet generating electricity for homes on the Central Coast. Last year, those involved with PacWave, a project that tests devices using ocean waves for energy, were hoping to have said devices in the water in 2026. But there’s been a pause due to a delay in funding from the Department of Energy flowing to the developers.
Dan Hellin, the director of PacWave, said DOE is really the main funder of marine energy. But there’s been a lot of uncertainty under the new presidential administration.
“Every time you have a transition to a new administration, there's kind of a reshuffling, shuffling, reorganizing,” Hellin said. “This has gone on a little longer than you'd normally expect with this type of transition.”
Delays in funding not only postpone deployments but also compress the already limited time available to install wave energy converters. Otherwise, the ocean waves are too rough.
“It's challenging because your window of actually doing stuff … is really mid-May through the end of September,” he said. “So, if you're delayed in that deployment window that you have, if you get to the end of the season, you've lost six months.”
But this time isn’t totally wasted. Right now, scientists and teachers are using it to spark a sense of curiosity among students and discovery among researchers.
The project that started it all
PacWave — encompassing both North and South locations, as well as the shoreside facilities — is a unique wave energy converter testing project. It’s the only one of its kind in the United States, and one of ten similar facilities worldwide.
The construction phase of the facility was completed in 2024 with the installation of four cables buried up to a meter deep in the seafloor sediment. These cables — nearly 47 miles worth — stretch from the shoreside facility in Waldport to the PacWave South site near Newport. There are four connection points available for wave energy converters to ‘plug in’ to the cables, but funding delays mean that, currently, no wave energy converters, or WECs, are installed yet.
The ultimate goal is to attract clients to test different designs of WECs. But that’s not the case for Sarah Henkel, an associate professor in the Integrative Biology department in the College of Science at OSU. She’s tasked with monitoring the potential impacts of installing the cables and other project infrastructure on the local seafloor ecology.
“I have been taking seafloor samples of the site and the surrounding areas since 2013,” Henkel explained. “And now, we are doing our post-installation sampling to see if we can detect any changes from the physical installation of the cables.”
How does a marine ecologist monitor changes in invertebrate populations and species diversity? By getting muddy, of course.
Henkel collects sediment samples, sifting through them to gather the animals hidden within and preserving the specimens in jars. Those samples are then sent to taxonomists, who identify and count the different species found in the mud.
While this type of sampling requires a large vessel to deploy the sediment-grabbing device, known as the “box corer,” the process itself is relatively straightforward, making it an ideal hands-on introduction to the world of marine science for students.
Class is in session — at sea
First, the students were given a safety briefing by the Pacific Storm captain, Kevin Cool, and crew members Mark Papazian and Patrick Breshears. Cool gave them a tour of the vessel while pointing out key safety equipment. Then, Henkel briefed them on what they would be doing as part of the scientific crew that day. Data collection would involve taking a small sediment sample, then sifting through the remaining sediment over a sieve to search for marine invertebrates living in the mud and sand, and doing that as many times as they could fit in that day.
OSU undergraduate Natalie Donato, acting as Henkel’s assistant for the day, said the students and staff would also be keeping an eye out for large animals or “megafauna.”
“We'll be alternating between looking down at tiny worms and clams or looking up for sharks and birds and whales,” Donato said. “There will always be something to do.”
Expected findings
The very thing that makes PacWave a great site for wave energy converter testing — the consistent presence of large, energetic ocean waves — also means the seabed is used to a highly dynamic environment.
“Any sediment disturbance that might have happened from digging the trench, and then the sediment filling it back in, is probably on the scale of what these seafloor critters experience with a winter storm,” she explained.
Because no wave energy converters have been installed at the PacWave site yet, the cables aren’t currently transmitting power to the grid.
Still, researchers will monitor how energized cables affect the surrounding environment, and Henkel has already established a long-term baseline dataset to compare ecological conditions once devices are deployed. Henkel is also conducting laboratory studies to determine the potential impacts of electromagnetic fields from energized cables on sensitive animals, such as sharks and rays.
“We really don't expect big changes from the cable installation,” she said of her baseline data. “There are seafloor cables all over this planet. Electrical cables, telecom cables, internet cables.”
The first sample
Within an hour, the crew arrived at PacWave South, only noticeable by the presence of marker buoys, hinting at the much bigger state-of-the-art wave energy converters to come.
Henkel and Donato donned hard hats and life vests, then proceeded to the back deck to deploy the box corer for the first sample.
The device — somewhat reminiscent of a claw machine in an arcade — is sent to the bottom where gravity drives it into the sediment. Once it’s hoisted back on board, a pivoting metal spade seals the bottom shut, leaving the sediment layers undisturbed so scientists can better understand the seafloor’s geological character.
The box corer was deployed and retrieved, the winch operated by Breshears, one of the two crew members on board that day. A taller student, Ethan Anderson, was recruited to take the first measurement of the surface sediment before the rest of the sample was dumped into a bucket and poured into a sieve.
The students began sorting through the sediment. Hunched over the sieve in groups of three or four, they used forceps to break apart chunks of clay and mud, carefully sifting through the sand for anything that looked alive, had once been alive, or might contain life, like a shell.
Some creatures, such as bright red worms, stood out immediately. Others, like teeny tiny clam shells, were easy to overlook at first, but before long, the students’ eyes became trained to spot them.
'Somebody on this boat might be a worm ecologist'
As the students sifted through the sand and mud, Henkel told them about some of the interesting things they’d found since they began monitoring this area of the ocean floor.
Henkel is fascinated by the variety of sediment she finds in this area: “If you garden here on the coast in your yard, you've probably got one patch that's like perfect soil. And then there's all this clay and gravel just a couple paces away in your yard. So, you gotta remember, it's the same thing out here, right? It's just a continuation of the land.”
One animal found in sediment samples that Henkel is paying special attention to is the ghost shrimp.
Henkel said ghost shrimp are normally a deep burrowing species found in the estuary — not seven miles offshore. Henkel found ghost shrimp at the PacWave site prior to the installation of the cables. She and a graduate student are trying to figure out the cause and consequences of the crustacean’s unexpected presence offshore.
Sand dollars have also appeared in remarkable abundance in recent years, also prior to the installation of the cables. Their bleached shells are a familiar sight to many Oregonians who visit the coast, often washing up on the sand. Offshore, however, researchers are now finding sand dollars far more widely distributed than previously observed, including at the PacWave site.
That expansion may be linked to the collapse of sunflower sea star, or Pycnopodia, populations along the Oregon coast following the outbreak of sea star wasting disease. Sunflower sea stars are one of the sand dollar’s primary predators, and their decline may be allowing sand dollar populations to flourish.
These are perfect examples of the kinds of questions scientists ask and investigate: What are the forces driving the changes we see in our natural world?
Selenia Harris will likely remember the day as her first experience seeing a whale.
“I've never seen a whale in person, so that was amazing,” Harris said, smiling. Two gray whales were spotted near the boat on the voyage. “When I saw it, my jaw just dropped to the floor. I’m one of those people that's a thrill junkie, but you know, [a] roller coaster could not ever amount to seeing a whale in the wild.”
After some bouts of seasickness, some of the students realized that going out to sea may not be their calling, and that’s OK. Cool said that can be just as important a lesson as anything else that day, and it’s exciting to see who gravitates to the work: “It's really, really encouraging for me as a mariner to think that there's potential mariners on the boat.”
The students and crew repeated the sample-collecting process 15 times throughout the day, along with other tests. For those who were able to find their sealegs, the sand sifting was a surprisingly fun process.
“They're getting to do lots of different parts of the work, from writing down data to hauling buckets and rinsing screens and pulling out worms,” said Sam Loftus, who teaches the Principles of Biology class. “And yeah, I think they're into it.”
On the way back to port, there was a sense of relief for some as the ship returned to calmer waters and, eventually, feet to solid ground.
Loftus said, “Part of why I think coming out on these trips is really important for them is somebody on this boat today might be a worm ecologist and didn't know it until today.”
