Tag: NOAA

On February 25, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer began a series of expeditions to explore America's vast marine protected areas in the central and western Pacific Ocean. Scientists will use unmanned remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that can dive down 3.7 miles to explore never-before-seen deepwater habitats and minerals, marine animals, and potentially, a World War II aircraft carrier. The dives will be broadcast live from the seafloor, allowing anyone with Internet access to watch in real-time.

NOAA Fisheries is expanding critical habitat for endangered North Atlantic right whales to cover its northeast feeding areas in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region and southeast calving grounds from North Carolina to Florida.

NOAA has launched a GIS-based tool, the Environmental Response Management Application, known as ERMA, an online mapping tool for organizing data and information for planning and environmental emergencies, such as oil spills and hurricanes.

NOAA archaeologists have discovered the battered hulls of two 1800s whaling ships nearly 144 years after they and 31 others sank off the Arctic coast of Alaska in one of the planet's most unexplored ocean regions.

NOAA and Cuba have signed an agreement to cooperate on the conservation and management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

 The Coast Guard is helping to get the word out about the importance and effectiveness of speed limits and the responsible use of the safety exception as they relate to the North Atlantic Right Whale. Therefore,  some of the annual seasonal speed restrictions, in the mid-Atlantic areas, came into effect on November 1, 2015 and will remain in effect until April 30, 2016.“NOAA’s robust and practical enforcement strategy has yielded very positive results – particularly on approaches to pilot stations.” said Rear Adm. Paul Thomas, assistant commandant for prevention policy.“The safety exception is an important part of the process. We greatly value the input provided by professional mariners, who benefit from a reasonable enforcement approach that considers the challenges of ensuring safe navigation in confined waters.”Also,  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is conducting a survey of its North Atlantic Right Whale Mandatory Ship Reporting (MSR system). The purpose of the survey is to evaluate and improve the MSR program.If you are a mariner operating or working on a vessel 300GT or greater on the east coast of the United States, or who has operated in this area in the past, NMFS is seeking your input on ...

 NOAA has upgraded its online map service providing more frequently updated ocean observations along with coastal and marine weather forecasts. “NOAA’s nowCOAST gives the public a one-stop-shop look at coastal conditions — real-time and forecast — before they do or plan anything on the water,” said Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director o f NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey.“Are you sailing? Look at the winds and currents. Are you a commercial shipper? Get your high seas marine weather forecast, on the same animated map where you can check the tides before you approach your port.”The original version of nowCOAST, available since 2003, has provided the public with information on the latest observed and predicted coastal weather, marine weather, and oceanographic and river conditions. The updated map viewer allows users to animate observations for the past four hours and forecasts for the next seven days.The new version also adds significant data from NOAA’s National Ocean Service and National Weather Service, including watches, warnings and advisories for hazardous marine weather conditions, even far offshore. It also provides near-real-time lightning strike density data for land and over water, and hydrologic conditions and predictions from ocean forecast models.Further details about this tool may be found at nowcoast.noaa.govSource & ...

View full NOAA Infographic by clicking hereAs record ocean temperatures cause widespread coral bleaching across Hawaii, NOAA scientists confirm the same stressful conditions are expanding to the Caribbean and may last into the new year, prompting the declaration of the third global coral bleaching event ever on record.Waters are warming in the Caribbean, threatening coral in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, NOAA scientists said. Coral bleaching began in the Florida Keys and South Florida in August, but now scientists expect bleaching conditions there to diminish.While corals can recover from mild bleaching, severe or long-term bleaching is often lethal. After corals die, reefs quickly degrade and the structures corals build erode. This provides less shoreline protection from storms and fewer habitats for fish and other marine life, including ecologically and economically important species.This bleaching event, which began in the north Pacific in summer 2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian oceans in 2015, is hitting U.S. coral reefs disproportionately hard. NOAA estimates that by the end of 2015, almost 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs will have been exposed to ocean conditions that can cause corals to bleach.The biggest risk right now is to the Hawaiian Islands, ...

 For 25 years, methodical research by scientists has investigated the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 on Alaskan communities and ecosystems. A new study regarding the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska shows that embryonic salmon and herring exposed to very low levels of crude oil can develop hidden heart defects that compromise their later survival, indicating that the spill may have had much greater impacts on spawning fish than previously recognized.The herring population crashed four years after the spill in Prince William Sound and pink salmon stocks also declined, but the link to the oil spill has remained controversial. The new findings published in the online journal Scientific Reports suggest that the delayed effects of the spill may have been important contributors to the declines."These juvenile fish on the outside look completely normal, but their hearts are not functioning properly and that translates directly into reduced swimming ability and reduced survival," said John Incardona, a research toxicologist at NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle."In terms of impacts to shore-spawning fish, the oil spill likely had a much bigger footprint than anyone realized."The research builds on earlier work by the Auke Bay ...

The first use of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) to perform bathymetry for updating the US nautical charts for NOAA occurred in the Alaskan Arctic this summer.