NOAA’s Fisheries Service is seeking comments now through November 19 on its proposed rule to authorize impacts to marine mammals during Navy training exercises around the Mariana Islands. The NOAA proposal includes protective measures designed to minimize effects on marine mammals.

Today, students from Carmel Middle School in Carmel, Ind., welcomed home Christine Hedge, a seventh-grade science teacher who spent six weeks in the Arctic Ocean on board the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy as part of a multi-year, multi-agency effort to collect seafloor mapping and oceanographic data along the North American Extended Continental Shelf.

Ship captains and pleasure boaters can now get free real-time information on water and weather conditions for the lower Mississippi River from a new NOAA ocean observing system that makes piloting a ship safer and more efficient.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest September on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service today announced that two of three populations totaling more than 200,000 spotted seals in and near Alaska are not currently in danger of extinction or likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. The announcement follows an 18-month status review.

El Niño to Help Steer U.S. Winter Weather

The United States today announced that it will seek the strongest possible management for the conservation of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a fish which is in serious trouble.

After analyzing historical records and climate model data for two major U.S. droughts in the 1930s and 1950s, NOAA scientists found two very different causes, shedding new light on our understanding of what triggers drought.

The average September temperature of 66.4 degrees F was 1.0 degree F above the 20th Century average. Precipitation across the contiguous United States in September averaged 2.48 inches, exactly the 1901-2000 average.

NOAA today announced 11 grants totaling more than $9 million that will create new education projects in aquariums across the nation. The projects will educate visitors about the ocean and encourage better stewardship of the marine environment.

A new NOAA report on the health of California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary indicates that the overall condition of the sanctuary’s marine life and habitat ranges from good (highest rating) to fair (moderate rating), but identifies several threats to sanctuary resources, such as growing coastal populations, agricultural and urban runoff, vessel traffic and marine debris.

New regulations to protect the great white shark are now in effect in NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, a marine protected area just west of San Francisco. 

NOAA’s Fisheries Service today released its recovery plan for Middle Columbia River steelhead, a fish that was first given protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1999.

NOAA has awarded $457,000 in competitive grant funding to support three projects to better track and manage outbreaks of toxic red tide algae that threaten public health and New England’s shellfish industry.

NOAA is awarding $178,358 for the first year of a project to improve predictions of toxic algal blooms in the western Gulf of Mexico as part of an evolving national ecological forecasting capability. NOAA anticipates a nearly $1 million investment in this large-scale regional project over the next four years. The project is funded by the interagency Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms, or ECOHAB, program.

NOAA announced today the temporary closure of the black sea bass recreational fishery in federal waters north of Cape Hatteras, N.C., for 180 days in response to recent landings data that showed recreational fishermen may catch more than double their annual quota by the end of the year. The closure will commence Monday, October 5, 2009.

Unusually high temperatures in the Arctic and heavy rains in the tropics likely drove a global increase in atmospheric methane in 2007 and 2008 after a decade of near-zero growth, according to a new study. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, albeit a distant second.

NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco joined today with federal, state and local officials and volunteers at Hunt’s Mills Dam on the Ten Mile River in East Providence, R.I., to celebrate a $3 million American Reinvestment and Recovery Act project, restoring a migratory fish passage that will eventually accommodate 400,000 herring and shad along both the Ten Mile and Pawcatuck rivers.

NOAA has awarded a $13.1 million contract to Vigor Marine, LLC, in Portland, Ore., to perform major repairs and upgrades to the NOAA hydrographic survey vessel Rainier.

NOAA announced a $4.4 million award to Complete Building Corporation from Charleston, S.C. for construction of NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center in Mobile, Ala. The facility will be the regional home to the agency’s Office of Response and Restoration — the NOAA organization charged with responding to oil spills, hazardous material releases, and marine debris.