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Strange Delights Found on Oregon Coast

By Darla Reed

Stumps at Neskowin

(Oregon Coast) – From the northern Oregon coast to the central coast, spring break is starting off on a slightly off-kilter note.

Oddball things are appearing all over the beaches – ironically just prior to Oregon’s Spring Beach Cleanup, happening on Saturday. This winter’s storms have pulled large amounts of sand off the beaches, revealing rare finds like remnants of forests thousands of years old, agates in places where they haven’t been seen in ten years, and the stormy wave action has altered the flow of some creeks on the coast. And in Seaside, what are sometimes called “ocean burps” have resulted in a variety of sea objects and marine life cast onto the beaches recently.

Andre’ Hagestedt, editor of Beach Connection and a publicist/marketer for various businesses on the coast, has been covering the oddities for this publication and says it’s almost like an episode of “The X-Files.”

'Ocean burp' in Seaside (courtesy Seaside Aquarium)

“It’s all very ‘X-Files’ at times,” he said. “But it’s been extremely enlightening. I’ve learned a lot. And if there’s one big thing I’ve come away with on all this, it’s that these spring months are going to be freaky out on the coast. There’s always some interesting things that go on during spring that people just don’t know about, or they ignore. But this spring has got a lot more than usual going on.”

Hagestedt said the ancient tree stumps are left over from a massive earthquake that sunk part of a forest, perhaps 5000 to 10,000 years old. The ground likely dropped anywhere from six to ten feet rather abruptly, leaving the trees to become preserved by the surf.

Now, with lower sand levels, these are visible at Neskowin, Newport’s beaches north of Yaquina Head, and Rockaway.

Keith Chandler, head of the Seaside Aquarium, told Beach Connection these are sometimes visible at beaches south of Cannon Beach, like Arcadia Beach or Hug Point State Park.

Also, in Newport, agates have again returned to Agate Beach because of the lower sand levels. And storms there altered the landscape to move the flow of a large creek that meanders across the beach, allowing better beach access from some access points.

Chandler also talked extensively to Beach Connection and Hagestedt about the “ocean burps” that happened in recent weeks in Seaside. The technical term is detritus, meaning all kinds of non-living debris and some living creatures get tossed onto the shore.

“These are truly freaky finds,” Hagestedt said. “Keith told me about a lot of wacky and beautiful things you can find in these, like rare snails, starfish not normally seen on land, squid eggs and some geologic tidbits. And there’s a good chance we’ll see another sometime soon.”

Hagestedt said the spring months also bring a lot of moody weather and other natural events that join together and create wild moments. “Right now, you often get a lot of phytoplankton getting born. And there are certain kinds that are things that create sea foam. So, you can get these funky spring storms, and more sea foam than usual, and that makes for some wild, wild stuff.

Cape Perpetua on that stormy, foamy day

“I’ll never forget a stormy day I spent near Yachats about 12 years ago, and I saw what looked like snow going the wrong direction. It was drifting upwards from the Devil’s Churn – this giant basalt groove that accentuates the wave action. It was the weirdest, most surreal thing I’d ever seen. When I got down there, it turned out be sea foam, so frothy and churned up by the wind that chunks would go flying up, sometimes more than 100 feet.”

Hagestedt said that Whale Watch Week happens this week as well, but whales are still visible for a few more weeks.

“I can’t stress enough how this spring and spring break is going to be more interesting than normal,” Hagestedt said. “It’s just unbelievably cool right now, if you know where to look.”

See related stories below for more on these subjects.

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