Seaside Aquarium: Debris Field of Nature Stuff on N. Oregon Coast is 3 Blocks Long

Published 10/06/24 at 1:15 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Seaside, Oregon) – An extraordinary treasure trove of natural stuff washed up onto the north Oregon coast this week, known as an “Ocean Burp.” Staff from Seaside Aquarium found the monumental debris field at the Avenue U area of Seaside, saying it covered about three blocks worth of beach and was a foot high or more in some places. (All photos Seaside Aquarium)

What it contains is essentially a beachcomber’s dream: it's chock full of little creatures, unusual rocks, bits of skeletons and some beautiful shells.

It comes from an upwelling – basically cold water that pushes up from the deep after north winds move things around in just the right manner. As it burbles up, it brings with it all sorts of goodies from the deep, oceanic stuff that basically has sunk to the bottom.

When upwellings happen like this, locals along the Oregon coast call it an “ocean burp.” Except this is the kind of burp that's quite welcome.

“These debris fields can be as vast as a few city blocks or just small little isolated areas,” said Tiffany Boothe with Seaside Aquarium. “This one covered about three blocks.”

You'll find an enormous array of things, she said.

“These small debris fields are usually composed of small bark chips, shells, large tubeworm casings, hermit crabs, algae, kelp, and sometimes even skate egg casings,” Boothe said.

Moon snail shell

In this case, Boothe said there were a ton of dead, molted crab carcasses – essentially the crab has left its shell behind. These are a major all-you-can-eat buffet for gulls.

There was both the beautiful and slightly bizarre, plus some amount of the usual human garbage that has made its way into the ocean.

“Large 3–4-inch moon snail shells were plentiful in this particular burp,” Boothe said. “We collected all of the trash we found, including 12 golf balls.”

There was the skull of a seabird and parts of a marine mammal's vertebrae.

“There were a lot of giant western nassa shells,” Boothe said. “Most were empty but a few had Alaskan hermit crabs residing inside.”

In some areas this debris was just a few centimeters thick. In others it was a foot or more.

All this is brought to you by an ocean upwelling, which happen quite a bit off the Oregon coast. When there's a lot of stuff getting tossed up into an ocean burp, it means the upwelling was likely close to shore.

They also found...er...um...an octopus

“An upwelling is an oceanographic phenomenon that involves wind-driven motion of denser, cooler, and usually nutrient-rich water towards the ocean surface, replacing the warmer, usually nutrient-depleted surface water,” Boothe said. “This juggling of water from the bottom of the ocean to the surface often lifts debris sitting on the seafloor into the water column. As the tide comes in, the debris is cast onto shore.”

The National Weather Service's (NWS) Colby Neuman talked to Oregon Coast Beach Connection about these a few years back. Upwellings are an important part of the ocean ecosystem and yet driven almost entirely by weather.

North winds blow across the ocean surface, which in turns pushes water away to the right, and that causes colder waters from below to churn up. It creates an upward current.

The curious thing is these winds don't necessarily push water in the direction they're going – as you would think they would. They pull water away from shore, pushing the colder water close to the coast outward into the warmer, offshore waters.

“When winds blow across the water, it tends to move the water to the right,” Neuman said. “So if it’s the north wind, it’s pulling water away from the coast.”

Conversely, a south wind would pull water to the right and thus push warmer waters in towards Oregon.

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