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OR&R Staff Mentor Participants in USCG Environmental Response Industry Training Program
APRIL 27, 2020 — Periodically over the years, U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) active duty members interested in learning more about spill science will shadow a Scientific Support Coordinator or other member of OR&R’s Emergency Response Division under the USCG Marine Environmental Response Industry Training Program.
At the moment, Emergency Response Division staff are currently mentoring two junior officers in the Pacific.
One officer is currently attached to the USCG’s Pacific Strike Team, a specialized team of oil/hazmat responders that works with SSCs quite frequently during spills and disaster responses. She is remotely shadowing the California SSC and hopes to learn more about NOAA spill tools and expertise as well as how we tailor those assets to the unique needs of a given response. She has also shadowed other responders from California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) and with EPA Region 9.
The other officer is currently stationed at USCG Sector Honolulu and is similarly interested in response tools and how they are used. He is remotely shadowing the SSC for the Pacific Islands and has also shadowed responders from industry (Marine Spill Response Corporation and National Response Corporation) and the State of Hawaii’s Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response (HEER) office. He will soon transition to Sector New Orleans, where he will continue to work with SSCs and OR&R Emergency Response Division staff.
In addition to the varied experiences these young officers will gain by temporarily embedding with a variety of responders, many NOAA tools have been touched on with more to come. Here are some of the topics covered thus far:
- OR&R/ERD overview for spill and disaster support
- Aerial observations of oil
- Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique (SCAT)
- Oil fate and transport modeling (e.g. ADIOS, GNOME, WebGNOME)
- Environmental satellite data from NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data & Information Service (NESDIS)
- Submerged Oil Mat (SOM) guidance
- Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA)
- Arctic spill response
- OR&R R&D
- Disaster/SCAT electronic data tools
- Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA)
- National Weather Service (NWS)
- Response tools (e.g. CAMEO Chemicals, ALOHA)
- Data management considerations
- Special Monitoring of Applied Response Technologies (SMART)
Contact Jordan.Stout@noaa.gov or Ruth.Yender@noaa.gov for more information.