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BSEE and NOAA to Complete Arctic Oil Spill Response Mapping Tool

Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA?) The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced they are partnering to enhance the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA?) for the Arctic region by summer 2012. ERMA? is the same interactive online mapping tool used by federal responders during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This effort will help address numerous challenges in the Arctic where increasing ship traffic and proposed energy development are increasing the risk of oil spills and chemical releases."This emergency response tool was invaluable when managing the Deepwater Horizon response," said BSEE Director James A. Watson, who served as the federal on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Coast Guard during the disaster. "Adding this tool to the Arctic region would provide a tremendous boost to the current oil spill response capabilities there. We are very pleased to work with NOAA to provide this enhanced capability to those involved in planning and response activities.""Launching this tool for responders, media and the public during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a groundbreaking technical achievement and one of the most significant contributions NOAA provided to the historic, large-scale response," said Monica Medina, NOAA principal deputy under secretary ...

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Tracking an Ocean of Carbon

Carbon Group at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory The Carbon Group at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) works to advance our scientific understanding of the ocean carbon cycle and how it is changing over time. PMEL's research includes documenting the evolving state of the ocean carbon chemistry with high quality measurements on ships and autonomous platforms, studying the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle and the processes involved, and investigating how rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change affect the chemistry of the ocean and its marine ecosystems.PMEL's efforts support NOAA's commitment to improve the Nation's ability to anticipate and respond to climate impacts, and to conserve and manage healthy oceans, coastal ecosystems, and marine resources.

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Observing the Ocean Just Got Easier

Regional IOOS Associations Improve Online Access to Data, Info The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System, or IOOS?, is a vast, coordinated network of people and technology working together to deliver data on coastal waters, Great Lakes, and oceans. IOOS isn't just a NOAA program. Our ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes are too big for one agency to monitor. Instead, this system consists of partners from federal, regional, private sector, and academic organizations.IOOS partners collect coastal and marine data - water temperature, water level, currents, winds, waves, and more - using satellites, buoys, tide gauges, radar stations, underwater vehicles, and a bunch of other high-tech tools.This ocean data is then turned into information that people can use, often in the form of forecasts and products designed to track, predict, manage, adapt, and respond to changes in our marine environment.For more information, click here.Source: NOAA

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What is the Sargasso Sea?

The only sea without a land boundary! The Sargasso Sea is a vast patch of ocean is named for a genus of free-floating seaweed called Sargassum. While there are many different types of algae found floating in the ocean all around world, the Sargasso Sea is unique in that it harbors species of sargassum that are 'holopelagic' - this means that the algae not only freely floats around the ocean, but it reproduces vegetatively on the high seas. Other seaweeds reproduce and begin life on the floor of the ocean.A short animation showing global ocean currents and the location of the Sargasso Sea.Sargassum provides a home to an amazing variety of marine species. Turtles use sargassum mats as nurseries where hatchlings have food and shelter. Sargassum also provides essential habitat for marine species,such as shrimp, crab, and fish, that have adapted specifically to this floating algae. The Sargasso Sea is a spawning site for threatened and endangered eels, as well as white marlin, porbeagle shark, and dolphinfish. Humpback whales annually migrate through the Sargasso Sea. Commercial fish, such as tuna, and birds also migrate through the Sargasso Sea and depend on it for food.While all other seas in the world ...

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NOAA designates additional critical habitat for leatherback sea turtles off West Coast

Leatherback sea turtle is the largest marine turtle in the world NOAA announced the designation of additional critical habitat to provide protection for endangered leatherback sea turtles along the U.S. West Coast. NOAA is designating 41,914 square miles of marine habitat in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington.This designation will not directly affect recreational fishing, boating and other private activities in critical habitat. Critical habitat designations only affect federal projects that have the potential to adversely modify or destroy critical habitat. Critical habitat designations aid the recovery of endangered and threatened species by protecting habitat that the species rely on.NOAA and FWS have already designated critical habitat for leatherback turtles along Sandy Point Beach at the western end of the island of St. Croix, U.S.V.I., and in adjacent Atlantic coastal waters. NOAA is designating this additional critical habitat in the Pacific Ocean as a result of a petition to revise the existing critical habitat for leatherbacks to include important habitat off the U.S. West Coast. Once an Endangered Species Act petition is received, NOAA Fisheries must evaluate the petition and scientific information provided to determine if the petitioned action iswarranted. If it is, the agency ...

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Three vessels charged with violating Right Whale ship strike reduction rule pay penalties

Speed restrictions in seasonal management areas reduce risk of death to endangered whales Three large commercial vessels who were assessed civil penalties this fall for violating seasonal speed limits designed to protect one of the most endangered whale species in the world have paid their penalties in full. Cases against six other vessels for the same offense are still open.The ship strike reduction rule, enacted in December 2008, restricts vessels of 65 feet or greater to speeds of 10 knots or less in seasonal management areas along the East Coast to reduce the chances of North Atlantic right whales being injured or killed by ships.Notices of Violation and Assessment (NOVAs) were issued Nov. 21 by the NOAA Office of General Counsel's enforcement section to owners and operators of vessels that allegedly traveled multiple times through the seasonal management areas at speeds well in excess of the 10 knots allowed under the regulations.The alleged violations occurred between November 2009 and January 2011 outside of New York City; Charleston, S.C.; Brunswick, King's Bay and Savannah, Ga.; and Mayport, Fla. One vessel was charged with 16 counts of speeding. Vessels' documented speeds ranged from 13 to 18 knots, and the vessels traveled these ...

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Voluntary Speed Restrictions in Effect

Dynamic Management Area has been established in the vicinity of Jordan Basin The Republic of the Marshall Islands issues Marine Safety Advisory regarding VOLUNTARY SPEED RESTRICTIONS IN EFFECT as follows:Please be advised that the NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Marine Fisheries Service has announced that a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area - DMA) has been established in the vicinity of Jordan Basin to protect an aggregation of 15 right whales sighted in this area on 9 January 2012. This DMA is in effect immediately through 24 January 2012. Mariners are requested to route around these areas or transit through them at 10 knots or less.The coordinates for this DMA are as shown below. Please note that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued a news release stating that civil penalties assessed against three large commercial vessels for violating seasonal speed limits intended to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales this last fall have been paid in full. Cases against six other vessels for the same offense are still open.Vessels of 65 feet or greater in length are restricted to speeds of ten knots or less in seasonal management areas along the East ...

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Comprehensive Picture of the Fate of Oil from Deepwater Horizon Spill

WHOI Scientists A new study provides a composite picture of the environmental distribution of oil and gas from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It amasses a vast collection of available atmospheric, surface and subsurface chemical data to assemble a "mass balance" of how much oil and gas was released, where it went and the chemical makeup of the compounds that remained in the air, on the surface, and in the deep water.In June 2010, a WHOI-led team used the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry in the Gulf of Mexico to define and characterize the deepsea hydrocarbon plume from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Sentry, equipped with a miniaturized mass spectrometer called TETHYS, was able to crisscross plume boundaries 19 times to help determine the trapped plume's size, shape, and composition. (Photo by Chris Reddy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)The study, "Chemical data quantify Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbon flow rate and environmental distribution," is published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.The lead author, NOAA research chemist Thomas Ryerson, assembled an all-star team of 14 scientists from diverse backgrounds and organizations including academia, private research institutions and federal labs, all of whom played important roles ...

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Chemical measurements confirm official estimate of Gulf oil spill rate

11,130 tons of gas per day New NOAA-led analysis shows gases and oil in three chemically different mixtures deep underwater, in the surface slick, in the airBy combining detailed chemical measurements in the deep ocean, in the oil slick, and in the air, NOAA scientists and academic colleagues have independently estimated how fast gases and oil were leaking during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.The new chemistry-based spill rate estimate, an average of 11,130 tons of gas and oil compounds per day, is close to the official average leak rate estimate of about 11,350 tons of gas and oil per day (equal to about 59,200 barrels of liquid oil per day)."This study uses the available chemical data to give a better understanding of what went where, and why," said Thomas Ryerson, Ph.D., a NOAA research chemist and lead author of the study. "The surface and subsurface measurements and analysis provided by our university colleagues were key to this unprecedented approach to understanding an oil spill."The NOAA-led team did not rely on any of the data used in the original estimates, such as video flow analysis, pipe diameter and fluid flow calculations. "We analyzed a completely ...

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