What is Sea Grant?
Oregon Sea Grant is:
- A network of researchers, using science to probe basic questions about ocean and coastal life and processes.
- A coast-long network of Sea Grant Extension agents, specialists and educators who bring the results of that research to the people and communities who can put it to work.
- A network of communicators, using print, audio, video, and new technologies to inform people about marine and coastal issues.
These overlapping teams work collaboratively with each other and with outside educational, agency, and private-sector partners to further the charge given by Congress when it established the National Sea Grant College Program under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1966:
"... to increase the understanding, assessment, development, utilization and conservation of the nation's ocean and coastal resources."
Oregon Sea Grant's programs have a total annual budget exceeding $5 million in state and federal funds. By law, at least 50 percent of federal Sea Grant dollars must be spent on research grants, which we distribute to scientists and teams of scientists from Oregon higher-education institutions via a highly competitive, peer-reviewed process that has served as a model for other programs.
Fanning out from the central campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon Sea Grant faculty and staff work the length of the coast and along the Columbia River, from county offices of the OSU Extension Service, at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and at the OSU Seafood Lab in Astoria.
Sea Grant also manages the HMSC Visitor Center, and its marine education programs, as part of a broader marine education focus that includes graduate and undergraduate fellowships, an Aquarium Science associate degree program, and a new Free-Choice Learning Initiative that seeks to learn more about how people learn outside the classroom.
At OSU, we are classified among the "colleges, centers, institutes and programs" overseen by the university Research Office - and also as one of five major areas of emphasis of the OSU Extension Service.
Through its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oregon Sea Grant is part of a nationwide network of Sea Grant programs with whom we often collaborate on projects of regional and national importance.
Oregon Sea Grant works closely with its citizen Advisory Council and with other public and nongovernmental organizations to help bring reliable, objective, science-based information to all levels of ocean and coastal policymaking.