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How much marine debris is along our nation’s shorelines, and how is it changing over time? From Alaska to the Caribbean, scientists are surveying hundreds of shorelines to better understand marine debris across the United States and its territories. In 2024, the NOAA Marine Debris Program launched the NOAA Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project Nationwide Survey, a shoreline survey effort spanning 620 sites in 10 pre-defined regions incorporating every U.S. coastal state and inhabited territory.
Supporting Clean, Healthy Coasts and Economies
Prepare • Respond • Restore • Recover
OR&R Services
Disaster and Pollution
OR&R delivers critical services to address increasing impacts from disasters and from pollution due to oil, chemicals, and marine debris. Our pollution and disaster mandates provide the backbone for our mission to the changing nature of coastal threats and hazards, which impact our coastal communities and the economies on which they rely.
Oil and Chemical Spill Response
OR&R provides scientific support to over 150 oil and chemical spills in U.S. waters annually. Spills impact lives, property, and public natural resources, as well as disrupt marine transportation with widespread economic impacts.
Oil and Chemical Natural Resource Restoration
OR&R and partners assess the impacts of oil spill and industrial pollution incidents and reach legal settlements with those responsible to fund restoration. Over the past 30+ years, NOAA and co-trustees have helped recover $10.8 billion for restoration of injured resources across the country.
Marine Debris Prevention and Removal
OR&R investigates and prevents the adverse impacts of marine debris. Since 2006, we have supported over 260 marine debris removal projects and removed more than 38,000 metric tons of marine debris from our coasts and ocean.
Emergency and Disaster Preparedness
Through planning, training, exercises, disaster coordination, and continuous improvement, OR&R ensures the National Ocean Service and its partners have the tools and information necessary to plan for and respond to disasters so commerce, communities, and natural resources can recover as quickly as possible.
Featured News
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When oil spills, chemical dispersants can be used to break slicks into smaller droplets for "oil-eating" microbes to digest. OR&R recently joined experts at New Jersey's Ohmsett facility to test this alternative response technique under real ocean conditions.
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With funding from the NOAA Marine Debris Program, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is seeking proposals under the Hurricane Response Marine Debris Removal Fund. NFWF will award up to $11 million in grants to support projects that assess and remove marine debris in communities in Florida, Georgia, Guam, North Carolina, and South Carolina impacted by Hurricanes Idalia, Helene, Milton, and Typhoon Mawar from 2023-2024 and improve those impacted coastal environments. Full proposals are due on October 21, 2026, 11:59 PM EDT.
Exploring more than 30 years of habitat restoration across the country is now easier than ever with an updated interactive case map, developed by NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation and Restoration Program. This new tool lets users search and explore more than 148 nationwide pollution cases and incidents—including oil spills, Superfund sites and vessel groundings.