2025: Navigating Uncertainty, Building Resilience
A year in review
2025 was one of those years. You know the kind — where you wake up in January wondering if your flagship project will even get funded, by summer you’re standing on the dock watching fishermen sell their catch directly to customers through a cooperative you helped build, and by fall, kelp forests the ORKA team is working to restore are showing measurable recovery. By December, you’re still waiting for the snow to arrive…Yeah, that kind of year.
Kelp Forests: From Funding Limbo to Restoration Reality
The early months brought serious uncertainty about NOAA funding for the Oregon Kelp Forest Stewardship Initiative of the Oregon Kelp Alliance (ORKA). But we successfully navigated those waters and launched an ambitious, multi-site kelp forest restoration program that’s already delivering. Almost 330,000 purple sea urchins removed. Successful kelp outplanting with growth of wild kelp. Sunflower sea star recovery work. Six coastal sites. The kind of results that make all the planning and uncertainty worthwhile.
ORKA’s $2.5+ million initiative isn’t just about numbers on a progress report. It’s about restoring habitat, supporting coastal communities, and building the foundation for expansion. Visit the Oregon Kelp Alliance website and join our mailing list to keep up to date on this exciting project! Oregon Kelp Alliance
Port Orford Field Station: Ten Years in the Making, Dismantled Overnight
Here’s where I get a little salty. After a decade building the OSU Port Orford Field Station into a successful research, education, and community engagement program, federal budget cuts — or rather, OSU’s response to rumored federal budget cuts — led to dismantling the program. Ten years of partnerships, research projects, community connections, and educational programs. Gone.
But here’s what the OSU leadership couldn’t dismantle: the community’s recognition of what we built together. On August 21, 2025, the City of Port Orford issued a Mayoral Proclamation declaring it Tom Calvanese Day. That wasn’t about me — it was the community’s way of saying what mattered, what had value, and what was lost when institutions make decisions with spreadsheets instead of with communities.
I’m good. The work continues. But Port Orford remembers how this went down, and so do I.
Port of Port Orford: Working Waterfront Revitalization
While navigating funding challenges and administrative transitions, the Port completed its first major infrastructure project: replacing aging high-capacity cranes with two new 50-ton cranes. They’re operational. They’re working. They’re exactly what the waterfront needed at the just the right time.
And we’re not stopping there. Three major projects are being launched in 2026:
· Economic analysis: getting real about the Port’s financial future (and present).
· FEMA-funded Dock Road stabilization and strengthening: natural hazard mitigation that’s been needed for years to preserve the only road to and from the port.
· Seawater pump ashore system: ready to bid out and break ground on this transformational project that will leverage one of the Port’s most valuable assets: direct access to the Pacific Ocean!
As 2025 closes, we’re waiting on funding decisions for the Port Orford Seafood Hub — either the MARAD/PIDP proposal comes through, or we’re resubmitting it along with a BUILD proposal that would fund the hub plus critical dock infrastructure: new pilings, product hoists, stormwater systems, and more.
Add to that the DOE Energy Technology Transition Partnership Program (ETIPP) support for developing a microgrid with power generation and backup power and new dock pedestals to supply power and water to commercial vessels. The Port is building infrastructure that works, piece by piece, project by project, to revitalize this hard working waterfront.
Port Orford Seafood Market: A Fishermen’s Cooperative
This might be my favorite development of 2025. The Port Orford Seafood Market — a fishermen’s cooperative has gone from concept to reality and is already showing what’s possible. Dockside markets selling fish directly to customers. Check. Installing a product hoist available to all fishermen, improving access for sellers and buyers. In progress. Planning the Port Orford Seafood Cooperative Market in the future Seafood Hub. Underway.
Eight fishermen working together, developing value-added products like smoked black cod, controlling their own marketing and distribution. This is what working waterfront revitalization actually looks like.
2025 delivered challenges and breakthroughs in roughly equal measure. Programs dismantled and others built. Infrastructure delivered. Communities strengthened. Kelp forests recovering.
The ocean’s still here. The community’s still here. The work continues.
More on what’s next in the new year.
Happy New Year everybody!
Keep it up! Pass the salt please!
Thank you for your amazing gift Tom - what you channel to our community in both the work and the message is a priceless gift! I'd say that 2025 looks pretty good in the rear view and the positive outlook for 2026 is bright!