Secrets of the Season

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Wild Skies and Beaches this Weekend on Oregon Coast

Landscape east of Lincoln City: this may not be a bad place to look for the meteor shower

To see an update on more oddities washing ashore, click here

(Oregon Coast) – There's more than Labor Day Weekend going on.

A host of stunning, even strange natural events are in store for the final weekend of summer on the Oregon coast, with tourists to the area in a position to witness shooting stars, an ocean burp, strange fish behavior, and maybe even glowing sand or the occasional baby shark washing up on shore.

A wide array of interesting examples of nature have been occurring recently, and this coming weekend promises even more.

Saturday morning will feature the Aurigid meteor showers throughout the western U.S. and much of the world, visible here from about 4:06 a.m. to 5:06 a.m. Some astronomers are predicting it could yield as many as 2000 meteors in that time period, often with dazzling colors.

Gearhart, where looking for glowing sand and the shooting stars is not a bad idea

This meteor shower happens once every two thousand years, so exactly how this will pan out is not certain.

On the coast, weather permitting, the skies will be much clearer than they are in the valley areas, allowing for much more intense viewing in these areas. The sunrise and presence of the moon may make seeing the display a little more difficult, however.

Astronomers advise to look in the east and northeast. So, many of the prime high vantage points along the coast that are normally good for viewing shooting stars may not work as well. Spots like Neahkahnie Mountain above Manzanita or Cape Foulweather near Newport have large chunks of land behind them, covering up the eastern views.

It is suggested to go to dark beach areas with low-lying eastern mountains, like Lincoln City, Waldport or the areas north of Gearhart on the north coast. (To see pictures of the recent lunar eclipse from the coast, click here).

A rare shot of the glowing phytoplankton, taken by Tiffany Boothe of Seaside Aquarium, while pouring wet sand and photographing it with a low shutter speed

If you want sparks above and below, the nighttime is also a good time to check the beaches for the legendary “glowing sand” effect that has been hitting the Oregon coast recently. Find a sandy beach with little or no interference from the moon or manmade lights, and you may run across tiny, faint green/blue sparks that come up from your feet as you scuff them along the sand. Look for wet sand, somewhat near the tide line – but not at the tide line. However, sometimes this has been seen far from the tide line, such as a night last summer when BeachConnection.net spotted it just beneath the cliffs of Nye Beach.

It’s a spectacular, weird sight that causes people to uniformly shriek with delight when they first spot it.

The critters creating the "glowing sand" may be especially spectacular in bays like the Nehalem Bay

Sometimes, pools of sea water that have standing for much of the day are excellent plays to find this effect, which is caused by tiny phytoplankton called dinoflagelettes. If they’re in abundance there, it can look like small galaxies exploding beneath your feet for a second or two.

The dinoflagelettes are bioluminescent, meaning they give off light like fireflies. These occur more frequently in warmer, summer months, especially in later summer and the famed “second summer” – where the fall months are actually the warmest time on the Oregon coast.

If they’re present when you run your hand through bays like Nehalem Bay, they make an eerie glowing trail behind you in the water.

A vast array of eggs from the ocean burp (photo Tiffany Boothe)

Another spectacular occurrence of Mother Nature happened in recent days, when an “ocean burp” tossed up a bevy of odd items – both inanimate and alive – onto the beaches of Seaside. This is when a deep water upwelling of cold water pushes a variety of objects and creatures higher towards the top of the ocean, and the currents bring this debris and cornucopia of stuff onto the beach. Its technical name is detritus.

Tiffany Boothe, of the Seaside Aquarium, said the oceanic stuff happened Wednesday night at the cove area of Seaside.

The ocean burp at the cove

“It is scattered out over a large part of the beach and in some places five inches thick,” she said. “This particular burp had more shells in it than I had ever seen in the past. Most of the shells were smaller snail shells about one half to 1 inch in size. Though the burp occurred yesterday evening it most likely won't wash away all at once, and in fact will probably be around for the weekend.

“So if you like shells head on down to the cove.”

Boothe said this ocean burp brought up a large amount of Dungeness crab, pieces of brain coral, starfish, hermit crabs, tub worm casings and sponges.

Crabs and starfish lying around Seaside, part of the burp (photo: Boothe)

“If you are collecting shells you may want to make sure that you inspect them carefully,” Boothe said. “Hermit crabs hide very well and you may end up with something that smells quite unpleasant.”

Boothe also recently told BeachConnection.net about an unusually large amount of dead sharks that have washed up on the north Oregon coast. Three salmon sharks, four soupin sharks and one great white were discovered in various areas, from Rockaway Beach up to southern Washington. Staff at the aquarium theorized that this year’s warmer waters have brought in more tuna, which in turn have brought in more sharks to the area – thus more will wash up dead. (More on the discovery that one shark turned out to be a great white here - as well as more about a decomposing whale, porpoise, a baby seal and more sharks that have washed up since this story was published)

However, Bill Hanshumaker, Public Marine Education Specialist with the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport said an alarmingly large amount of baby salmon sharks have washed up on the central coast.

Dead salmon shark pup: the entire coast has been seeing a lot of these washing up lately

“I have had more than a half dozen reports of dead baby great white sharks,” Hanshumaker said. “Without exception, these turn out to be baby salmon shark pups. Though I typically see one or two every summer, this year’s higher number of dead pups is unusual. Salmon Shark pup are identified by their secondary keel and non-serrated teeth.”

Something similar has been happening in central California, where a large amount of dead baby sharks have been washing up there as well. But necropsies done on the creatures have revealed they had encephalitis, a disease of the brain.

Anchovies in a panic in the estuary at Seaside (photo: Tom Horning)

Also in the unusual nature category, a pair of fishermen spotted a giant Leatherback Sea Turtle ambling around the waters off Garibaldi in recent days. This is an extremely rare occurrence, even though their consistent presence off the Oregon coast is a well-kept secret.

Tom Horning, with the Natural History Center in Seaside, said there was another spectacular anchovy run about a month ago with fish so manic they actually hopped out of the water.

Pelicans herding the anchovies in the estuary (photo Horning)

“The fish acted differently this time, periodically to nearly continuously having mass panic attacks and flipping out of the water, mostly as the tide retreated and the fish were trapped by shoals,” Horning said. “Maybe there was some spawning going on, but they certainly would go nuts when the pelicans flew overhead.”

Horning said the pelicans swarmed around the river and literally herded them. “The pelicans were seen on the river, pushing the fish against the bank, trapping them there, and easily scooping them up for dinner,” Horning said.

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