Marine Mammals

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program announced today the funding of 15 grants totaling more than $2.2 million through the jointly managed Coral Reef Conservation Fund (Coral Fund). The grants will help prevent further negative impacts to coral reefs by educating local communities and improving management effectiveness.

A larger facility to focus on Great Lakes issues opened today following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Pittsfield Township, Mich.

NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware are seeking public comment on a restoration plan to repair and improve shoreline and habitats of the Delaware River damaged by a vessel oil spill in 2004.

U.S. commercial and recreational fishing generated more than $185 billion in sales and supported more than two million jobs in 2006, according to a new economic report released by NOAA's Fisheries Service.

Juliana P. Blackwell has been named the new director of NOAA’s Office of National Geodetic Survey where she will oversee NOAA's responsibilities for the nation's spatial reference system. She is the first woman to head the nation's oldest federal science agency which was established by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807 as the Survey of the Coast.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service and its rescue team partners attempted a disentanglement of a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale earlier today.