What can $28 million do to restore polluted waters across America? In the 2019 fiscal year, NOAA worked with our co-trustees to reach settlements to restore natural resources injured by pollution.

Seven cases were settled, including one oil spill, one ship grounding, and five hazardous waste sites. This $28 million will go toward restoring habitats, fisheries, public spaces, and the communities and economies that depend on them.

Explore our story map to learn more about what $28 million means for waters across America.

The proposed projects are evaluated in a draft restoration plan (PDF, 96 pages), out for public comment for 45 days until Dec. 2, 2019. Additionally, the trustees will host an information session on Nov. 6 in Navassa, North Carolina to present the draft plan and get comments from stakeholders and community members.

The Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation Corp. site is a former 250-acre wood-treatment facility adjacent to the Cape Fear and Brunswick Rivers, and Sturgeon Creek in Navassa, North Carolina. It operated almost 40 years and was eventually dismantled, but hazardous chemicals were left and released into the surrounding environment. The high levels of contamination have harmed organisms and their homes at the bottom of bodies of water, getting into the rest of the aquatic food web, as well as other habitats, fish and wildlife.

The Cape Fear and nearby rivers river once supported thriving migratory fish populations, including shad, sturgeon, blueback herring and others, which had immense ecological, economic, and recreational benefits for the local community. But, polluted waters, as well as barriers to fish migration caused populations to decline.

The 10 “Phase I” proposed projects listed in the draft plan are designed to restore and preserve habitats for fish and other species, similar to those at the Superfund site. They include:

• Alligator Creek Restoration and Conservation
• Lower Cape Fear Bottomlands Conservation
• Battleship North Carolina—Living Water Restoration 
• Merrick Creek Conservation
• Carolina Beach State Park Restoration 
• Moze Heritage Site Tidal Restoration
• Indian Creek Natural Resource Restoration and Conservation 
• Navassa Stormwater and Riparian Restoration
• Lower Black River Conservation 
• Navassa Waterfront Park

This draft plan (PDF, 96 pages) represents a first phase of restoration in this area; a portion of a 2014 $23 million settlement with the company responsible for the pollution. The trustees will continue restoration in phases until all remaining settlement funds are exhausted.

To submit comments during the 45-day window, please send them to Howard Schnabolk, NOAA Coastal Marine Specialist in Charleston, South Carolina, at howard.schnabolk@noaa.gov with the subject line “Kerr-McGee Draft Restoration Plan Comment.” 

Or mail your comments to:

Howard Schnabolk ℅ NOAA Restoration Center

2234 South Hobson Ave

Charleston, SC 29405

Requests for hard copies of the draft plan should be submitted to the email or mailing address above before the December 2 comment deadline.

The Nov. 6 information session will be held at the Navassa Community Center at 6:30 p.m. The trustees encourage stakeholders and community members to attend to learn more about the plan and submit public comment:

Nov. 6, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. ET

Navassa Community Center

338 Main Street

Navassa, NC 28451

For more information about the Kerr-McGee Superfund site, visit the Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program website.

M/V Golden Ray, a 655-foot roll-on/roll off vehicle carrier, capsized in St. Simons Sound near the Port of Brunswick, Georgia on Sept. 8. Early response efforts prioritized search and rescue for four crew members, and extinguishing a fire that broke out. The crew of 24, including four who were trapped in the engine room, were all safely rescued. 

The Golden Ray was carrying its own fuel and lube oil at the time it capsized. In addition to the vessel’s own fuel capacity, the cargo poses a pollution risk, as the cars aboard each contain fuel, lube oil, batteries and other fluids and chemicals. 

The vessel has had several discharges of oil over the past month. Systematic shoreline surveys have found patchy oiling on nearby shorelines, including marsh habitats. Some wildlife has been affected. The Unified Command is partnering with local stakeholder groups to track and evaluate reported sightings of oil, including working with permitted wildlife specialists to locate, examine and rehabilitate potentially oiled wildlife.

The Georgia Department of Health has issued a swimming and fishing advisory, and members of the public are encouraged to visit the Georgia Department of Public Health website or call 844-863-0325 for further public health information and advisories. Specialists continue to actively monitor air and water quality around the vessel, Jekyll Island, and St. Simons Island.

As of Oct. 10, lightering operations have now removed more than 220,000 gallons of fuel from the vessel, according to the latest Unified Command press release. More than 400 personnel and 70 vessels are currently responding to the incident. During the lightering of the vessel’s fuel tanks, several small spills have occurred. The lightering remains a complicated and lengthy project, as the vessel remains on its side where it is subject to strong tidal currents and inclement weather, including lightning storms. 

Responders used booming, open-water skimming, and shoreline cleanup for the small spills — keeping cleanup equipment on standby in case of further incidents. Free floating oil contained in the engine room and cargo spaces is also being skimmed when possible.

The Office of Response and Restoration Emergency Response Division is providing the U.S. Coast Guard with scientific support. During the oil removal and salvage operations, the scientific support coordinator on scene is providing trajectory modeling, best management practices, shoreline assessments, and cleanup operations support. Partners are also on scene helping with shoreline surveys, oil characterization, fate, and other activities. The office is supplying remote support using the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®), an online mapping tool for environmental response data, by adding response data for the Incident Command Post. 

The office is also coordinating with the National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Protected Resources and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources on marine mammal and turtle surveys. 

NOAA’s involvement in the incident has increased as spill response, weather, and tidal current needs arise. Other NOAA offices involved include: the National Weather Service, NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS), and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. 

For more information on the ongoing response efforts, visit the St. Simons Incident Unified Command and Joint Information Center website.

On Sept. 8, the U.S. Coast Guard notified OR&R that a 656-foot vehicle carrier, M/V Golden Ray, had capsized in St. Simon Sound. The vessel had onboard a crew of 24 with a cargo of 350 vehicles at the time that it rolled over on its left side. The initial response efforts prioritized search and rescue for four crew members still aboard the freighter. The other 20 crew members were safely removed, according to a Coast Guard press release. 

Shortly after the vessel capsized, a fire broke out in the cargo area on the right side — slowing the rescue efforts for the remaining crew members. The fire appeared to go out on its own, and the four crew members were rescued on Monday, Sept. 9. 

The following day response efforts shifted focus to securing all sources of potential oil release, salvage, and environmental protection. A light oil sheen was observed near the stern area, though there did not appear to be an active release occurring. Pollution containment boom was deployed around the vessel to prevent the spread of potential oil releases. 

Field assessments later discovered the sporadic small releases of fuel occurring from the vessel had resulted in oiling along nearby shoreline and marsh areas. Diving operations are ongoing to determine the source of the release.

NOAA’s scientific support team met with the environmental unit, local, state and federal resource agency representatives to discuss resources at risk in the area and protection priorities for the response efforts. 

NOAA’s Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) is being used as the common operating picture for the unified command, and the National Weather Service is providing spot forecasts to aid in trajectory analysis for any fuel released. 

The cause of the incident remains under investigation. For more information on the ongoing response efforts, visit the St. Simons Incident Unified Command and Joint Information Center website.

Dorian first developed as a tropical storm on Aug. 24 in the Central Atlantic before devastating the Bahamas as a Category 5 hurricane on Sept. 2-3. Dorian’s trajectory slowed over the following days as it made its way northeast where it made landfall at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on Sept. 6 — fluctuating between a Category 1 and Category 2 hurricane.  

Through overflights done by both the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Geodetic Survey to assess shoreline impacts, more than 60 vessels have been identified as a potential pollution risk. Scientific Support Coordinator Frank Csulak, with OR&R’s Emergency Response Division, is currently working out of Coast Guard operations in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.  

OR&R’s contract partner, Research Planning, Inc., is screening targets to determine vessel priorities. The total number of target vessels and containers to date is 61. The Coast Guard is in the process of bringing in contractors to remove the hazardous materials from the vessels. The Coast Guard also continues to conduct ground surveys.   

The Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) is being used as the common operating picture for the response to Dorian. ERMA is an online mapping tool that integrates both static and real-time data. In addition to pooling together overflight imagery, ERMA provides NOAA staff, facility, and asset information. 

For more information on the response efforts in the Carolinas and the Bahamas, visit the U.S. Coast Guard newsroom. 

By Jennifer Simms, OR&R’s Marine Debris Program

Originally from Mars, Pennsylvania, Caitlin grew up hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, and snowmobiling throughout the Appalachian Mountains and among the three rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio) that meet in Pittsburgh. In the summers, her mom would take her and her younger brother on extended beach trips to either the Outer Banks, North Carolina or St. Augustine, Florida where Caitlin spent as much time in the water as possible.

It was during her first sampling trip out to the Chandeleur Islands in Louisiana that Caitlin Wessel was struck by the pervasiveness of marine debris and the enormity of the issue. The Chandeleur Islands are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, and are known for their pristine, natural environment. Yet as Caitlin collected and sieved seagrass cores, she and other researchers kept having to stop and pull out pieces of plastic. Astonished and a little dismayed, she wondered how marine debris was impacting other areas of the Gulf of Mexico if this remote, uninhabited island chain had plastic intertwined in much of the seagrass beds. 

This experience launched Caitlin on a marine debris focused research and career path, and led her to her role as the Gulf of Mexico regional coordinator for OR&R’s Marine Debris Program. Her region includes Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. She’s based in coastal Alabama, where she has lived for seven years. Since 2016, Caitlin has worked with partners to address marine debris issues, implement prevention and removal projects, assist with disaster preparedness, and foster collaboration across the region.

What Caitlin enjoys most about working on the Gulf Coast, besides sweet tea and cheese grits, is the community. 

“They live and work on the water, and realize we all need to do our part to protect it,” Caitlin said. “It’s rewarding to work directly with partners to understand their needs and how we can work together to reduce marine debris issues.”

In one instance, Mississippi shrimpers were pulling up derelict crab traps that were getting caught in their trawls. Not only were these derelict crab traps catching (and killing) crabs and other non-targeted species, the traps were also damaging the shrimpers’ nets and reducing their catch, leading to an economic hardship they couldn’t afford. Collaborating with the Environmental Protection Agency Gulf of Mexico Program, Mississippi State University Extension Service, and two organizations representing the shrimpers, Caitlin worked with the team to develop a program that allows shrimpers to turn in derelict crab traps to be recycled and track how the traps impact them economically. 

Caitlin also appreciates the variety of partners she gets to work with. Each spring she works with the Weeks Bay National Estuary Research Reserve to bring marine debris information, lessons, and projects to educators attending the Teachers on the Estuary (TOTE) workshop. 

“Working directly with teachers is incredibly rewarding and a great way to get accurate information to students whose actions will be the key to reducing and preventing marine debris now and in the future,” Caitlin said. 

While a good portion of her job keeps her in the office, Caitlin jumps at the opportunity to get out in the field when possible. She has participated in crab trap cleanups from Florida to Louisiana, recorded debris during shoreline surveys, collected data on research cruises with NOAA Fisheries, deployed to the Joint Field Office in Texas after Hurricane Harvey, and helped build and mount new monofilament recycling bins in Galveston, Texas.  

While diligent and timely response efforts did prevent an oil spill, the T/V Margara caused significant damage to the coral reef. More than two acres of the reef were affected, including six species of coral that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The incident resulted in areas with unstable coral rubble, which can cause further damage to the surrounding living reefs as they are moved by waves and storms. 

After the incident, emergency coral restoration was conducted, which saved approximately 10,500 corals. While this provided some restoration, NOAA and the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources determined further action was needed to stabilize the reef and recover injured resources. A Final Primary Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment outlines proposed activities to benefit the injured coral reef. 

The coral reefs along the southwest coast of Puerto Rico are highly productive and important environments, home to a great diversity of tropical marine organisms including fish, shellfish, other invertebrates, and several protected species. The selected restoration projects will aim to stabilize the reef and bolster recovery for the corals and the many species that rely on them. 

Visit the Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program site for more information. 

Following the damage assessment some of the “oil on the water” group, a team of remote sensing experts, continued to further develop and validate what they knew about characterizing oil slicks for the largest spill in American history. The cross-agency team identified gaps in knowledge and technology that, if addressed, would advance our ability to use remote sensing data and information to inform future responses and assessments.  

This report to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) summarizes and builds upon lessons learned during Deepwater Horizon and aims to help fill those gaps. It describes our efforts to field-validate remote sensing data and information by collecting data on the water, remotely from the air, and from space, at the same time to allow cross-comparison and validation to provide the greatest accuracy from remote sensing estimates. 

The authors tested their tools in labs, in large oil testing tank facilities, and in the field, pioneering new methods and improving existing ones. These tools will allow experts to more accurately measure and characterize the thickness of surface oil slicks in the marine environment.

With this information, responders can identify areas of thick oil that can be collected, burned, or dispersed and to better quantify the volume of oil spilled. This sound science will help oil spill experts respond better, and provide more comprehensive damage assessments to hold polluters accountable. 

This research effort was led by OR&R Chief Scientist Dr. Lisa DiPinto and scientist George Graettinger and included many experts from NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, academia, and the private sector.  

NOAA continues to conduct collaborative follow-on research involving three-dimensional water column characterization of oil in the water column. We will continue to advance our ability to use remote platforms and sensors to characterize oil in the environment in support of oil spill responses and assessments.  

The full report is available online at BSEE.gov.

The data is available in the NOAA Common Operational Picture ERMA (Environmental Response Management Application).

OR&R’s Disaster Preparedness Program was created in 2017 to strengthen existing operational capabilities to ensure the National Ocean Service and its partners have the tools necessary to plan for and respond to disasters. To strengthen commerce and communities, the program uses NOAA’s expertise to ensure that response plans are reviewed and tested regularly, equipment is maintained, and staff are well trained. The program aids NOS and partners who deliver critical disaster response services in events ranging from human-caused disasters such as oil spills, to natural disasters such as hurricanes.

To learn more about the Disaster Preparedness Program, listen to NOAA Ocean Podcasts’s latest episode: “NOAA’s Disaster Preparedness Program: Planning for Tomorrow, Today.”

Marine biologist Gary Shigenaka has been interested in science and biology for as far back as he can recall. Growing up in Illinois, he was the type of kid who spent his free time collecting frog eggs to hatch into tadpoles, and monarch butterfly caterpillars to watch their transformation. He would bring home snakes from campouts, and delight in each new discovery of a nest of cottontail rabbits in the field.

“As cool as all of that was, it seems like many marine scientists of my ageing generation, I was totally seduced by television, and ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’,” Gary said. “Tadpoles were fascinating, but the stuff that Cousteau introduced me and so many others to was a saltwater world that was seemingly more complex, and colorful, and jaw-dropping.”

Gary is a third generation Japanese American, or “Sansei.” His family first came over from Japan in the early 20th century, when his maternal grandmother arrived in the U.S. by way of Seattle. Her original destination was San Francisco, but after the great earthquake that hit Northern California in 1906 she altered course for the Pacific Northwest.

Though his family’s roots in America began on the West Coast, Gary grew up in Chicago. His father had been among the thousands of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. His release was granted only under the condition that he move further inland for work. His father worked as a cook at a private hospital in suburban Chicago, where he rose to become the head chef. His mother worked hard raising her two sons, and later became a nursery school teacher. Though no one in his family came from a science background, Gary said his parents’ hard work and support facilitated his pursuit of a career spent in and around the ocean.

Growing up in Chicago, Gary’s opportunities for ocean-related exploration were limited. But at the age of 5, he had his first real-life encounter with the saltwater shores of southern California. His father used to take 8 mm movies of the family. He was able to catch Gary’s first ocean exposure on camera, showing him in a Pacific tide pool with an octopus wrapping its tentacles around his arm.

Gary’s interest in the ocean continued to grow throughout high school and into college as he went on to study oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating in 1976, Gary worked as a bartender in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. At the time, jobs were scarce for the new graduates who studied biology or environmentally-related issues. But he eventually got his start in the field working a temporary position for the Washington Department of Fisheries doing salmon research in the Puget Sound. 

Around the time his temporary position was wrapping up, the U.S. and many other countries were extending their coastal territorial authorities from 3 miles to 200 miles — meaning that many fisheries that had been in international waters were now under U.S. jurisdiction and management. As those fisheries transitioned from foreign harvesting to U.S. domestic, there were requirements for American observers to be placed aboard foreign fisheries vessels operating in the newly extended fisheries zones. The National Marine Fisheries Service needed foreign fisheries observers to make sure foreign fleets were fishing in permitted areas, and to verify their catch. 

Gary signed up to be an American observer aboard a Japanese crab factory ship operating in the Bering Sea, where he would remain aboard the ship until the U.S.-determined catch quota was filled, which was estimated to take six months.

“On the surface, this didn’t seem so bad. But this factory ship never went in to port. Six months at sea was really six months at sea, and in this case, the Bering Sea,” Gary said. “But what the heck, a free trip to and from Japan, a regular (if meager) paycheck, and an adventure. If you ignore the similarities to being incarcerated — being constrained to a 400- to 500-foot space, with 300 to 400 men, and not even a remote possibility of stepping onto land, it was OK.” 

Gary spent two seasons aboard the ship. He then applied for positions with NOAA and landed another temporary position helping with ichthyoplankton research in the Gulf of Alaska — eventually leading him to the NOAA Fisheries research ship, the Miller Freeman. 

“When my time was up, I was about to depart the ship and fly back to Seattle, when the Miller Freeman offered me a job as a deckhand and a quartermaster.,” Gary said. “And as was often my response to many opportunities that presented themselves back in those days, my attitude was, ‘why not?’”

Gary did a six-year stint as a crew member aboard the vessel. He eventually moved to the biological survey technician’s department, which supported the scientific parties that came aboard the ship. While aboard the Miller Freeman, Gary began to realize that he would always be collecting data for someone else’s research if he didn’t go back to school.

So with the blessing of his NOAA Corps ship’s captain and operations officer, Gary applied for and received agency support in returning to graduate school. While working on his master’s degree at the University of Washington’s School of Marine Affairs — under the tutelage of former director, Dr. Tom Leschine — he began to narrow his focus to environmental issues associated with the ocean. 

By Megan Ewald, Office of Response and Restoration

Not many could say their career began with a game of Ultimate Frisbee. But for physical scientist Ben Shorr, that’s exactly what happened.

Like most of the NOAA family and others who work in the environmental sciences, Ben has always had a love for the outdoors — water in particular. Growing up on Lake Michigan afforded him the opportunity to explore streams and inland waters. He especially enjoyed spending time sailing with his three siblings and their parents on their small family sailboat.

His passion for all things water-related led him to study civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With a focus on hydraulics and hydrology, Ben took college courses in stream restoration and open channel flow, which was at the cutting edge of the growing field of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing.

After graduating, Ben worked at the harbor in his hometown on Lake Michigan coaching high school sailing, racing sailboats, and applying for jobs in his spare time. The opportunity he had been waiting for came from an Ultimate Frisbee game in downtown Chicago. The team was an assortment of scientists and engineers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the perfect connection to open doors for his career. 

Ben was put in touch with a team of scientists working on contaminated sediment clean-up projects, which led to an internship with the EPA in Chicago doing Superfund site surveys. The surveys included sediment and benthic sampling, bathymetric surveys, and a lot of GIS analysis. As the internship transitioned into a two-year research fellowship, Ben traveled around the midwest mapping, designing, and performing sampling efforts. Some of those cases are the same clean-up efforts that OR&R works on today.

After two years in Chicago, Ben started thinking about where he could live that would best support his sailing and newly-formed snowboarding habit. After visiting friends in Seattle he decided on the plane ride home that he would move out west as soon as he could afford it.

“I explained my plan to my girlfriend (now wife), and six months later I packed a bag and my little sailboat and drove out to Seattle with meager savings, but plenty of hopes and dreams,” Ben said.

After he arrived in Seattle, he connected with George Graettinger and Jay Field at NOAA, whom he had met through his work at the EPA in Chicago. The team in Seattle graciously gave him a desk to work at while he finished up his work with the EPA.

Ben soon began working for OR&R on cases and sites across the country under a research fellowship for a year, until he applied for and got a job as a physical scientist with OR&R.

“I have had the great opportunity and privilege over the past 17 years to work with an incredible team of scientists across the country on a range of projects,” Ben says. “This work includes restoration design and engineering, sample design and analysis, field sampling, ecological risk analysis and, of course, a lot of data management and mapping.”

Ben has worked on assessment and restoration efforts on sites across the coastal U.S. and Great Lakes, and on oil spills for over a decade. He worked on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and was aboard the first government scientific research vessel sampling and tracking oil coming from the well. Ben spent the rest of 2010 and into 2011 working on the response to Deepwater Horizon as part of the subsurface monitoring unit that coordinated and organized scientific data collection.

This is especially important when it comes to protected species like sea turtles.

To best prepare oil spill experts for oil spills where sea turtles could be impacted, NOAA has released “Guidelines for OIl Spill Response and Natural Resource Damage Assessment: Sea Turtles." The document is accessible online.

Top sea turtle and oil spill experts came together to develop these guidelines. The 200-plus page document contains invaluable resources on a wide range of topics, including sea turtle vulnerability at various life stages, conceptual models for injury assessment, and field and lab data collection protocols.

A story map has been developed to translate this valuable information about sea turtles for a general audience. It displays many of the impressive facts and figures used in the guidance document.

By doing this, NOAA aims to foster information sharing among experts responsible for protecting sea turtles, and the American public that cares about them.

Explore the story map here.

Sherry Lippiatt works for OR&R’s Marine Debris Program as the regional coordinator for California, though her love for science and the environment first began on the East Coast. The daughter of a federal economist and a small business owner, Sherry was raised in Maryland not far from Silver Spring where NOAA is headquartered.

Sherry said that annual family trips to the coast every summer were some of her favorite memories growing up, but that she remembers the amount of trash in some areas, particularly the marinas, was staggering at times.

“I was always really curious about the environment in general. We [my family] did a lot of camping and skiing, and my parents always had a boat on the Potomac River,” Sherry said. “In hindsight, the river was probably pretty polluted, and I was just old enough to notice it. So that likely had an influence on me wanting to go into environmental science and helping to conserve our natural resources.”

In high school, Sherry showed an aptitude for math and science and in her junior year received the Rensselaer Medal — an award that comes with a substantial scholarship to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. While working toward her undergraduate degree in environmental science, she landed a summer research internship at the University of Hawaii, helping a master’s student with a marine geology project. The internship was her first exposure to oceanography.

“The vastness of the ocean and how, even relative to outer space, it’s not that well understood, it really piqued my interest,” Sherry said.

After graduating, Sherry wanted to escape the cold of New York and continue pursuing her interest in the ocean. She searched up and down the West Coast for a graduate program, and made the move to California where she received a doctorate in ocean science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Throughout her studies in California, Sherry had the opportunity to go on a number of different research cruises, spending up to six weeks at a time at sea. Though the work was hard, Sherry said it was also rewarding. She enjoyed the research and the experience, but after graduating decided to look outside the world of academia for the right career fit.

“[After graduating] I really was looking for something more applied where I could see the direct relevance. While working on my dissertation, I was looking at the bioavailability of iron to phytoplankton in the Gulf of Alaska. In the end it came down to one number that went into someone else’s climate model,” Sherry said.

In 2010, Sherry discovered that OR&R’s Marine Debris Program was looking for a Sea Grant Knauss fellow. With her background in ocean science and marine chemistry, she was the perfect fit.

After her fellowship had ended, the timing was right for Sherry to stay on with the Marine Debris Program as a contractor through I.M. Systems Group in Silver Spring to provide scientific support. In 2011, the West Coast region was overseen by Nir Barnea, based in Seattle. When the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan that year — sending debris across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S. and other parts of North America — the region had more work than one person alone could manage. A separate region for California was created and Sherry became the first regional coordinator for California in 2012.

What Sherry enjoys most about working in California is the variety that it offers. She works with the program’s removal and prevention grantees, and also works closely with a variety of partners on the California Ocean Litter Prevention Strategy.

Sherry feels fortunate to live and work in a state that has so much policy attention to the issue of marine debris.

“We now have a statewide bag ban, straws are available only on request at restaurants, and we have a statewide trash policy for stormwater systems. There’s a lot of legislation focused on reducing and addressing marine debris, which has created a lot of action in research and removal,” Sherry said. “I really appreciate being able to work in a region where there’s so much public interest and willingness to tackle the issue.”

She also leads the Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project, a science initiative that engages NOAA partners and volunteers across the nation to survey and record the amount and types of marine debris on shorelines. Launched in 2012, the project participants have contributed data from 4,827 surveys across 375 shoreline sites in 20 U.S. states and nine different countries, as of March 2019.

“In the shoreline monitoring component, I really have grown and developed a huge appreciation for the value of citizen science and involving the community in data collection that helps participants feel more connected to the issue and their local environment. There’s a lot of conservation impact in having volunteers out on the shoreline, and they take it back to their daily lives in knowing how to reduce their own waste,” she said.