Clausen

In this case, involving the destruction of oyster beds which allegedly occurred as a result of an oil spill on the Oregon coast, we must determine the admissibility of expert testimony on the issue of causation.

I

Our story begins on February 3, 1999, when the M/V New Carissa, a Panama-registered and Japanese-owned freighter carrying 400,000 gallons of bunker and diesel fuel, bound for Coos Bay, Oregon, to pick up a load of wood chips, anchored two miles off the Coos Bay North Spit because the bar was too rough to cross. The next day, the ship’s anchor began to drag, and while its crew attempted to raise the anchor and move the ship to deeper water, rough weather pushed the ship toward shore, and it ran aground. The Coast *1052 Guard airlifted the twenty-three crew members and a bar pilot from the ship the next day. The vessel began to leak oil as pounding waves widened cracks in its hull. With an approaching storm threatening to tear the ship asunder with seventy mile-per-hour winds, federal and state authorities responding to the crisis feared an environmental catastrophe. They decided to try a maneuver never previously attempted in the contiguous forty-eight states — to burn…