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NOV. 12, 2024 — Over the past year, the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) and the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire partnered with Louisiana Sea Grant to launch a series of resources to assist communities following natural disasters.
OR&R Weekly Report
The Office of Response and Restoration publishes this weekly round-up of news and information of interest to our partners, stakeholders, and team members. Click to subscribe
NOV. 12, 2024 — Staff from the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) Assessment and Restoration Division and Emergency Response Division attended the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas from October 20–24, 2024. Attended by more than 1,500 scientists, the conference included 1,088 presentations—21 of which were co-authored by NOAA scientists—across 184 scientific sessions.
NOV. 12, 2024 — The NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) welcomed four interns from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES): Jalynn Aaron and Kayla Brown, both majoring in psychology, and Mikaela Blackwood and Amari Dupree, both majoring in biology. From this November 2024 through April 2025, interns will remotely support OR&R’s Assessment and Restoration Division with work on natural resource damage assessment and restoration.
July 2023
JULY 24, 2023 — During the week of July 10, spill specialists from OR&R’s Emergency Response Division conducted a Science of Oil Spills (SOS) class for the Pacific Northwest region in Portland, Oregon. The class was jointly hosted by OR&R and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
JULY 24, 2023 — The Anacostia River, which runs through Maryland and the District of Columbia, has suffered from many decades of pollution, from multiple sources including hazardous waste sites, runoff, and combined sewers. Communities along the Anacostia have been disproportionately impacted by this pollution.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 18, Nancy Wallace, Director of the NOAA Marine Debris Program, participated in a virtual workshop organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network as part of its Ocean Media Initiative.
JULY 24, 2023 — From July 10-14, students from Rainier Prep and Showalter Middle Schools spent the week as NOAA Science Campers at the Western Regional Center in Seattle, Washington. NOAA Science Camp is a program of Washington Sea Grant and offers hands-on science learning opportunities, as well as exposure to NOAA’s mission areas and science careers.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 11-13, 2023, staff from OR&R’s Emergency Response Division provided a three-day, virtual training in Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique (SCAT) for the country of Guyana.
JULY 24, 2023 — On July 13th, the Marine Debris Leadership Academy (MDLA) was launched at the Tijuana National Estuarine Research Reserve in San Diego, California. The MDLA was founded as an opportunity to empower leaders to continue to cultivate change in communities, systems, and themselves.
JULY 17, 2023 — On Thursday of this week, July 20th, the You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know lecture series begins its second annual OR&R 101 series!
JULY 17, 2023 — NOAA scientists, aided in recent years by citizen scientists, have been photographing a boulder in Prince William Sound for 33 years. Why? The rock was coated in oil in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground on Bligh Reef, dumping more than ten million gallons of crude oil into the Sound. Today, the boulder is known as Mearns Rock, nicknamed after Dr. Alan Mearns, a scientist emeritus in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration.
JULY 17, 2023 — On July 12, 2023, a $5.38 million settlement was proposed in Federal District Court to restore natural resources impacted by contaminants discharged along the Gloucester, Massachusetts waterfront.
JULY 10, 2023 — From June 26-30, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance’s Marine Debris Cross-Team Initiative, co-led by the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Gulf of Mexico Regional Coordinator Caitlin Wessel and US Fish and Wildlife’s Adriana Levia, held its annual half day meeting during the larger Gulf of Mexico Alliance All Hands.
JULY 10, 2023 — The NOAA Marine Debris Program is developing a national shoreline marine debris monitoring plan in partnership with Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. Several national-international scale initiatives call for tools to document and report on the status and trends of marine debris. These include Regional Marine Debris Action Plans, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and momentum toward a global agreement on marine litter.
June 2023
JUNE 26, 2023 — On June 13, the NOAA Marine Debris Program (MDP) coordinated and presented at the bi-annual California Ocean Litter Prevention Strategy webinar. The webinar brought together over 60 partners across the state and included a diverse set of sectors including state agencies, nonprofits, policy-makers, and academia.
JUNE 26, 2023 — On June 8, the NOAA Marine Debris Program unveiled a new sculpture made entirely of plastic marine debris items during a World Ocean Day event at the Cape Cod National Seashore.
JUNE 20, 2023 — NOAA’s Marine Debris Program is pleased to release the “Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Marine Debris Emergency Response Guide” (Guide). This Guide is the first published for the Pacific Region and aims to improve preparedness for responding to marine debris after typhoons and other disasters in the Commonwealth.
JUNE 20, 2023 — The NOAA Office of Response and Restoration participated in a three-day Response Roadshow hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Strike Team in Fort Dix, New Jersey on June 6-8, 2023. The purpose of the meeting was to build relationships as a response community to better understand how federal, state, and local governments, as well as private industry work together to prevent, mitigate, and respond to human-made and natural disasters.
JUNE 20, 2023 — On June 8, the NOAA Marine Debris Program joined artists and scientists from around the Washington, DC, area at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History World Ocean Day celebration.
JUNE 20, 2023 — On May 19, 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay hosted a demonstration of using trained canines to detect subsurface shoreline oiling at Slaughter Beach in Milford, Delaware.
JUNE 12, 2023 — On May 16-17, William Whitmore, OR&R’s Northeast Scientific Support and Regional Preparedness Coordinator, participated in a two-day oil spill planning workshop with MIT Sea Grant and the Mashpee-Wampanoag Tribe. The workshop, which was funded through OR&R’s Disaster Preparedness Program and the National Sea Grant Office, was the first step in a collaborative effort to help the Mashpee-Wampanoag tribe create an oil spill response plan for its aquaculture sites along the south coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
JUNE 12, 2023 — On June 6, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana entered the consent decree finalizing settlement between NOAA and LLOG Exploration Offshore, LLC. The settlement, valued at $3.1 million, resolves LLOG Exploration Offshore, LLC of their liability for natural resource injuries resulting from a pipeline spill that discharged oil into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana.
JUNE 12, 2023 — From May 29 - June 2, representatives from around the world met in Paris, France, for the Second Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
JUNE 12, 2023 — Six members of OR&R were recognized on May 2, 2023 as part of an Outstanding Group Award presented by the Seattle Federal Executive Board (SFEB). Recognized OR&R staff included: CDR Faith Knighton, LTJG Kyle Vincent, Chris Barker, and Andrew Mason. Two OR&R contractors, Dylan Righi with Genwest and Megan Ewald with CSS, also contributed to this accomplishment.
June 5, 2023 — On May 22, the NOAA Marine Debris Program's Chief Scientist, Amy V. Uhrin, gave a presentation during a virtual public webinar hosted by the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Seven speakers across as many federal agencies each provided a broad overview of their key research activities addressing micro- and nanoplastic pollution. Each of the speakers are members of the informal U.S. government nanoplastics interagency interest group that coordinates activities on this subject across federal agencies.
June 5, 2023 — After teaching Science of Chemical Releases (SOCR) classes virtually since 2020, the OR&R training team, comprised of Kim Albins, Bob Bradley, Adam Davis, Charlie Henry, Dalina Thrift-Viveros, Savannah Turner, and Al Valeriotti, offered the class in person again. This class was held at the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Sector Jacksonville, Florida facility from May 22- 25, 2023. There were 36 students representing the USCG, U.S.
May 2023
MAY 30, 2023 — On May 15 - 16, the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Northeast Regional Coordinator, Demi Fox, attended the 2023 URI Global Plastics Forum, in Kingston, Rhode Island. The forum brought together representatives from local, state, national, and international organizations and agencies to exchange knowledge and share plans for upcoming efforts.
MAY 30, 2023 — Findings and recommendations from a project funded by the NOAA Uncrewed Systems Research Transition Office, and conducted collaboratively by NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Oregon State University, and ORBTL AI, were recently published as a NOAA Technical Memorandum.
MAY 30, 2023 — NOAA and co-trustees are seeking public comment on a Draft Restoration Plan/Environmental Assessment (RP/EA) for the American Cyanamid Superfund site in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
MAY 30, 2023 — In early May, Harmony Wayner, Alaska Sea Grant Fellow with the NOAA Marine Debris Program, traveled to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to support its city-hosted annual cleanup. The yearly cleanup happens the first two weeks of May, with people picking up marine debris and litter around town. Nichel Kernin, the Recreation Program Coordinator for the city of Unalaska, organized the cleanup. Ocean Conservancy was a generous partner, donating gloves and snacks. The Qawalangin tribe of Unalaska also hosts beach cleanup events alongside this city effort.
MAY 22, 2023 — On May 11, 2023, the OR&R Scientific Support Coordinator for the Pacific Islands, Ruth Yender, hosted U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Rear Admiral (RDML) Jo-Ann Burdian at the Inouye Regional Center (IRC) on Oahu's Ford Island. RDML Burdian toured space at the IRC that will soon be occupied by a new USCG Indo-Pacific Regional Activities Center (IndoPAC RAC). The mission of the six-person IndoPAC RAC is to build response capacity in the region and to help partner nations implement International Maritime Organization Conventions on marine pollution.
MAY 22, 2023 — NOAA recently accepted a settlement for damage assessment and restoration for the Tug Powhatan oil spill. The $1.3 million dollar settlement will fund two restoration projects in Sitka, Alaska that will benefit Pacific herring spawning habitat, as well as local Tribes and communities. It will also reimburse costs incurred during the assessment.
MAY 22, 2023 — We are pleased to announce the winners of the Annual NOAA Marine Debris Program Art Contest! We received many colorful, creative, and informative entries from around the country, and although we wish we could showcase them all, we are excited to share the winners of this year’s contest with you.