OR&R's Disaster Preparedness Program recently hosted an open house for emergency management, response, and support partners at the Disaster Response Center in Mobile, Alabama. The event aimed to bring emergency management partners from across the Gulf together to discuss project collaboration opportunities and use of the facility to support preparedness, response, and recovery. Over 21 participants ranging from the Florida panhandle to Mississippi were in attendance. The event featured a tour of the Disaster Response Center, highlighting its amenities and uses as a safe and ready command center during major disaster responses in the Gulf. 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. It also supports exercises, training, workshops, and other preparedness activities. Open house attendees also learned more about the Disaster Preparedness Program and received an introduction to a Real-Time Currents and Meteorological Buoy (CURBY). Managed by NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, CURBYs are quickly deployable and provide real-time currents and meteorological data that can support disaster response, scientific research, and safe navigation.

The draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan/Environmental Assessment for the Bayport Channel Collision Oil Spill is now available and members of the public are encouraged to provide comments. Public participation during the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process is critical to fully capturing the impacts of spills. The draft plan proposes projects that will restore coastal wetland habitat at Gordy Marsh in Trinity Bay—a large area of high-quality wetlands and coastal prairie on the eastern side of Galveston Bay, Texas—which will help protect and improve water quality and support the recovery of species affected by the spill. The Trustees seek public input on the draft restoration plan. Please submit public comments by August 18, 2025.

The NOAA Marine Debris Program has been a key collaborator in recent scientific advancements improving the efficiency and accuracy of marine debris mapping, detection, and monitoring.

• Optimizing Marine Debris Shoreline Monitoring: Designing long-term environmental monitoring programs requires careful planning, often using power analysis to determine the best way to collect data. A recently published open access study used such an analysis to design a nationwide marine debris survey for 10 coastal regions in the U.S. and territories, by simulating data and comparing different statistical tests under various design parameters. The findings highlight the importance of considering both the accuracy of a test and its ability to detect real trends when designing environmental monitoring programs. This study was a collaboration between the Marine Debris Program and Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc. and represents a key milestone in NOAA's effort to develop a nationwide marine debris shoreline survey as part of the Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project.
• Advancements in Marine Debris Detection: Polarimetric imaging is a remote sensing technology that helps detect and identify manmade objects, particularly in challenging conditions like low light or noisy backgrounds. A recently published open access study showed that combining polarimetric data with regular color images (RGB) improved how well people could see debris on sandy shorelines and made it easier for computers to automatically identify it. This suggests that polarimetric imaging is a valuable tool for marine debris detection and its usefulness is expected to grow as the technology becomes more advanced and affordable. This study was a collaboration among the Marine Debris Program, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Oregon State University, and ORBTL AI and formed the basis for the master’s thesis of Kyle Herrera at Oregon State University.
• Mapping Urban Macroplastics: Informal landfills in urban watersheds of developing countries have an especially high risk of leaking waste into the environment. A recently published open access study explored how satellite imagery can be used to map such plastic pollution aggregations. Results show that common plastic types have unique signals in satellite imagery that allow for the identification of urban plastic waste. This suggests that satellites could be a valuable tool for mapping and tracking urban plastic waste to support monitoring efforts and inform removal. This study was a collaboration between the NOAA Marine Debris Program and San Diego State University and formed the basis for the master’s thesis of Elena Aguilar, a 2022-2023 NOAA Experiential Research and Training Opportunities intern with the Marine Debris Program.