The NOAA Marine Debris Program, a division of the Office of Response and Restoration, leads national efforts to research, prevent, and reduce the impacts of marine debris.

Staff are positioned across the country and support marine debris projects in partnership with state and local agencies, tribes, non-governmental organizations, academia, and industry. The program also spearheads national research efforts and works to change behavior in the public through education and outreach initiatives.

The Office of Response and Restoration's Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD) is responsible for evaluating and restoring coastal and estuarine habitats damaged by hazardous waste releases, oil spills, and vessel groundings.

Working with partners, ARD, through NOAA's Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program, determines the harm to the environment and defines the amount of restoration required to compensate the American public for those impacts.

NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center (DRC) brings together NOAA-wide resources to improve preparedness, planning, and response capacity for natural and manmade disasters along the Gulf Coast. Located in Mobile, Alabama, the center is focused on the five states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

The facility is designed to survive up to Category 5 hurricane winds, contains a Force-5 tornado shelter, and has backup power systems to continue operations in the midst of severe weather. Intended to serve as a safe and ready command center during major disaster responses in the Gulf, the DRC also offers facilities for drills, trainings, workshops, and planning activities.

South of Seattle, Washington, the airplane manufacturer Boeing Company has created one of the largest habitat restoration projects on the Lower Duwamish River. Boeing worked with NOAA's Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program and our partners under a Natural Resource Damage Assessment to restore habitat for fish, shorebirds, and wildlife harmed by historical hazardous substance releases on this heavily used urban river. The restoration included reshaping the shoreline and adding 170,000 native plants and large woody debris, which provide areas where young salmon can seek refuge from predators in the river. Two acres of wetlands were also constructed on the site, all of which will be maintained by Boeing to ensure productive habitat for years to come.

NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center (DRC) sponsored or hosted 21 different meetings, workshops, and training events at the Mobile-based facility in fiscal year 2014. These events included a Federal Regional Response Team meeting, a Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program class, NOAA's Science of Oil Spills class, and a tropical storm–preparedness exercise co-sponsored by the National Weather Service.

The DRC also hosted the Alabama Emergency Management Agency for their class on Managing Floodplain Development through the National Flood Insurance Program. In addition, the DRC provided meeting space for Mobile County Emergency Management Agency for their local Mass Care meeting, which is held annually.

Providing a home for these trainings allows the DRC to be a central hub for all-hazards coordination and to improve emergency responder readiness throughout the Gulf of Mexico region.

Having the right tools and information on hand is vital to any response, whether responders are spread across the country or facing the challenging conditions of the Arctic.

In September 2014, the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) launched an updated version of the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA^®), an online mapping tool integrating key environmental response information for decision makers. The updated tool is the first official NOAA system to be hosted on a federally approved external cloud service provider. With many behind-the-scenes improvements, these enhancements will increase the scalability and performance of the application and strengthen ERMA's data management practices.

While the cloud increases the capacity to share information anywhere with Internet, response teams need to be able to use ERMA where little or no connectivity exists, such as on the Arctic Ocean. For the second year in a row, OR&R addressed this challenge when an Internet-independent version of ERMA was used in the U.S. Coast Guard's Arctic Shield exercise. Participating in these kinds of drills also allows NOAA to better integrate into ERMA real-time data from unmanned aerial surveying equipment, which might be used during a spill response in remote areas.

Three years after the Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster, the deposition of Japan tsunami marine debris (JTMD) has subsided, and agencies addressing this issue have accumulated considerable experience, insight, skills, and lessons. To capture and share this information, the NOAA Marine Debris Program coordinated a May 2014 meeting of the entities most involved with JTMD: federal, state, and Indian Tribe representatives, as well as resource managers and university scientists who had been part of NOAA-led bi-weekly debrief calls. The goal of the meeting was to summarize the main activities to date, derive lessons learned, and make recommendations for future severe marine debris events. Read a summary of the proceedings [PDF].

Each year, NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration, through its Emergency Response Division, provides extensive training on the scientific aspects of oil and chemical spill response and planning. Classes, workshops, and training materials help spill responders increase their understanding of oil spill science when analyzing spills and making risk-based decisions. In fiscal year 2014, these training efforts reached more than 2,000 representatives from dozens of organizations, including the U.S. Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Navy, tribes, state agencies, industry, universities, and nongovernmental organizations.

Training events included classes in the Science of Oil Spills (SOS) and Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Technique (SCAT), as well as training in aerial observation of oil (overflights). NOAA staff also taught in-depth, half-day workshops on a variety of topics at the 2014 International Oil Spill Conference. In addition, the Emergency Response Division partnered with The COMET^® Program to develop its first online training module, designed specifically for U.S. Coast Guard aircrews, who may spot oil spills in the course of their work. The online training provides a basic one-hour introduction to aerial observation of oil on water.