Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
WCOA member Scott Groth works for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) Marine Resources Program managing a section focused on resources, assessment, and management. The section is diverse, including fish research, ocean energy, marine habitats, marine mammals, shellfish, and marine reserves. Given ODFW management authority, many of the staff are responsible for developing efficient and creative methods to characterize fish, wildlife, and their habitats.
ODFW’s Fish Research Project developed and implemented new methodologies to understand abundance of nearshore midwater fish populations combining sonar, video, and fishing. The resulting abundance estimate is being used in the assessment of black rockfish, Oregon’s most popular marine, sport fishery.
Fish research lander cam video still, speciating rockfishes for stock assessment in Oregon’s nearshore. Photo: Leif Rasmuson, ODFW Fish Research Project Leader.
ODFW’s Marine Mammal Program works with federal, state, and tribal entities to understand, quantify, and manage pinniped populations. To assess these populations, the team has developed new methods using drones from coastal headlands and combined this with traditional fixed wing (aerial) counts to improve understanding and estimates.
Pinnipeds hauled out at Tillamook Head lighthouse photographed for population estimates, Photo: Mike Brown, ODFW Marine Mammal Program Leader.
ODFW’s Marine Habitat Project works to understand fish and invertebrate associations with seafloor habitats, and addresses management issues (e.g., development) relating to habitat. In 2022, staff developed a detailed spatial quantification of kelp beds in Oregon’s nearshore. This fixed wing, aerial kelp survey builds on ODFW work dating back to 1990. This work has been used extensively by groups analyzing changes in Oregon’s kelp beds and provides a useful comparison to methods being considered by the WCOA kelp subgroup.
ODFW’s Marine Habitat staff deploying ROV. Photo: ODFW
