The ocean floor is a different story.
Outside the deep knowledge of local fishermen, the floor of Oregon's 3-mile-wide territorial sea and the deeper waters just beyond it are largely uncharted.
Last month, the conservation group Oceana spent three weeks closing a bit of that gap. Using a remote-operated undersea vehicle equipped with a high definition camera, the group documented sea life in "hot spots" near the Oregon, California and Washington coasts.
It's the first time the group has used the ROV outside Monterey Bay, Calif. -- and likely the first time the areas have been explored in such detail, says Craig Young, director of the University of Oregon's Charleston-based Institute of Marine Biology.
Two Fridays ago, Young stood on the rocking deck of Oceana's chartered research boat as the group zoomed in on ocean life in the fertile waters off Cape Arago.
The best part of marine biology, he says, is the constant stream of new discoveries.
"Almost every place we go, nobody's ever been before," Young says. "And that includes today."
After a view minutes, the feed arrives. At first, it looks like a black-and-white moonscape.
Then the extraordinary collections of marine animals come into focus: strange undersea gardens of corals and sponge, ghost-white anemones, young yelloweye rockfish, sea squirts, gorgonian coral -- hot pink on the high definition video downloaded later -- and intricate basket stars, whose spidery arms undulate for food.
The scientists aboard cluster in close to watch, fingers stabbing at the computer screen, while Ben Enticknap, Oceana's Pacific project manager, feverishly takes notes.
"The invertebrate guys are getting pretty excited back there," Shester reports with a smile.
When it comes to ocean diversity, tropical coral reefs most often come to mind. But the diversity is similarly high in the temperate waters off Oregon's coast.
The state's waters host thousands of species of invertebrates, Young says. About 150 have been documented near Cape Arago with just small amounts of scientific dredging and testing.
The invertebrates, also known as "habitat engineers," are crucial for rockfish, the bread-and-butter of the close-in coastal fishery. The fish find food inside the dense networks of invertebrates and use them for cover.
Oceana's work will complement exploration by Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife and university researchers. The scientific goals include documenting diversity, providing baseline data for evaluation when conditions change and comparing life in different stretches of the sea in greater detail.
That protection is more likely to win public support if people can see the extraordinary diversity of sea life just offshore, says Shester, a Stanford Ph.D.
"We can only protect what we can understand," he says. "If everyone thinks it's a barren, muddy place out here, no one will want to protect it."
At this point, Oregon has two small marine reserves in its territorial sea, Redfish Rocks near Port Orford and Otter Rocks near Depoe Bay. Last Friday, ODFW announced it would delay implementation of those reserves until Jan. 1, 2012, instead of June 30 of this year, citing the need to collect more baseline data to improve future monitoring.
Community teams reporting to ODFW have recommended reserves in three more spots: Cape Falcon south of Cannon Beach, Cascade Head near Lincoln City and Cape Perpetua near Yachats. But the Legislature failed to give them an explicit thumbs up, meaning Gov. John Kitzhaber will decide how to proceed.
Conservation groups want him to issue an executive order authorizing the new reserves. Other options include going through ODFW's commission and the state parks commission. The Legislature did approve $1.6 million in funding for reserves.
The Port of Coos Bay is also considering a marine reserve off Cape Arago and the nearby Seven Devils area -- by no coincidence the area Oceana largely focused during its Oregon work.
An advisory committee voted against a reserve in March, with conservationists and marine scientists outvoted by fishing supporters and local representatives. The Port commission has yet to weigh in.
Jim Pex Sr., the committee's chairman, a recreational fisherman and longtime forensic scientist, says the area considered for a marine reserve is a crucial close-in fishing grounds, particularly important for charter operators and recreational fishermen.Damaging bottom trawling over reefs is rare, fishermen and conservationists agree. Rough weather limits fishing at near shore reefs. And each fisherman's catch of the area's rockfish is limited.
"We're aware of what a great area this is," Pex says. "But it doesn't need more government involvement. It's doing fine."
Enticknap of Oceana says it's important to establish a network of reserves connected by currents to help grow fish populations -- including perilously low stocks of some rockfish -- and to study how conditions are changing over time. The five reserves already on the table would take up less than 10 percent of Oregon's territorial sea, he says, and leave "a huge gap" along the southern coast.
ROVs are allowing more exploration of Oregon's waters. They're not as expensive as manned submersibles. And they allow access to unprotected, deeper spots that researchers in SCUBA gear avoid.
The marine institute at Charleston recently purchased one of its own, which it plans to deploy later this summer.
On this day, Oceana's ROV dives range from 30 to 90 meters. The camera captures different varieties of long-lived rockfish, including black rockfish, the nearshore's most harvested fish, and yelloweye rockfish, considered overfished.
Young, the institute's director, sees invertebrates building on top of each other, providing nooks and crannies for small critters that fish feed on to hide. That helps ocean life to spread beyond just the large rocky reefs that predominate along some stretches of Oregon's coast.
Young, also a biology professor, is an expert on ascidians more commonly know as "sea squirts," a potential ancestor of fishes. On the trip, he saw "some amazingly large colonies" within a few miles of his institute.
The trip also documented large numbers of fern-like crinoids, including colonies at unexpected depths of 80 to 90 meters. The crinoids dominate the fossil record, but are far rarer today.
"I was pretty dumbfounded," Young says at the end of the day. "The diversity is incredibly high, higher than I expected. It would be pretty hard to make generalizations about the Oregon coast."
-- Scott Learn