An initial cooperative agreement between the two organizations includes a recommendation of $1.5 million for restoration with potential for additional funding to support similar projects in other regions over the five-year time period.

The multi-year partnership will help NOAA make major progress toward restoring areas impacted from the S.S. Jacob Luckenbach and M/T Command oil spills, and the Montrose hazardous waste site. Priority activities include restoring 37 acres of kelp forest and planning for restoration of a rocky reef at the Montrose site, essential habitats supporting a diversity of fish and marine life that are important components of commercial and recreational fisheries, and other recreational industries.

For the full story and additional resources, read the Damage, Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program article here. 

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release on Dec. 12, 2017 announcing the settlements. These settlements resolve claims brought by NOAA and its co-trustees regarding liability for historic industrial discharges of chemicals that caused injury to public natural resources.

The settlements include two projects that protect 324 acres of unique habitat and improve public recreational access to natural resources. Funding from the settlements will also provide for future restoration projects at these and other sites. NOAA and the co-trustees will jointly manage the settlement funds to implement projects described in the restoration plan. 

The Sheboygan River site encompasses the lower 14 river miles of the Sheboygan River, from Sheboygan Falls downstream to and including the Sheboygan Harbor on Lake Michigan, as well as adjoining floodplain areas.

To find out more about current and future restoration projects at the Sheboygan River and Harbor Superfund site, read the full story on the Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program site.

The settlements include projects that protect 324 acres of unique habitat and improve public recreational access to natural resources. (Image credit: NOAA.)

Not many follow the path their childhood selves first imagined. When asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” children often respond with “astronaut,” “firefighter,” or “superhero” — and few may actually grow up to become those things. But for Marine Debris Program Chief Scientist Amy Uhrin, the decision to go into marine biology had been made in grade school.

Amy was born and raised in Greenville, Pennsylvania, a small steel town 80 miles north of Pittsburgh. Her father was an avid hunter, trapper, and fisher, and the family lived on 7 acres of wooded land that he had partially cleared by hand.

“Thus, virtually from the womb, I had a deep appreciation for nature and enjoyed spending a lot of time outdoors,” Amy said.

As a child, Amy was also an avid reader — a critical asset in keeping up with all the relevant scientific literature. After a trip to SeaWorld in Aurora, Ohio, Amy knew what she was meant to be — a marine scientist.

Following her dream, Amy began her education at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York — achieving her bachelor’s in biology in 1992. When she entered into the Master of Marine Science program at the the University of Puerto Rico, Amy already had a clearcut vision for her career path. She wanted to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“Believe it or not, my ultimate career goal, when I entered my master’s program, was to find my way into NOAA,” Amy said.

After completing her master’s in 2000, she did just that.

 

FRESH OUT OF graduate school, Amy landed a position at the NOAA Beaufort Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina. She stayed there for 15 years as a research ecologist, conducting applied research in seagrass ecology and restoration. She also dabbled in studying how derelict fishing gear impacts benthic habitats.

In 2015, Amy joined the Office of Response and Restoration’s Marine Debris Program as the program’s first chief scientist.

As the chief scientist, Amy’s overall responsibility is to manage the program’s science and research portfolio, which entails deciding what the priority research focus areas should be and developing mechanisms to fund relevant projects — a task that requires her to stay up to date with the state-of-the-science on marine debris.

“Since joining the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Amy has transitioned from a field biologist to a research manager,” said Carlie Herring, research analyst for the Marine Debris Program. “Amy has expanded our research portfolio and has provided great leadership as the chief scientist. She is driving the marine debris research priorities for our grant competitions and providing direction for the future of marine debris research.”

Herring describes Amy as a very hard worker who knows how to get creative and think outside the box.

“Amy is very adventurous and loves trying new things. She brings a lot of energy and humor to the Marine Debris Program,” Herring said. “She also loves seagrass. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about seagrass before.”

In addition to managing the program’s research portfolio, Amy is also involved in international marine debris research working groups, including the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection, commonly referred to as GESAMP — a group of independent scientific experts that provides advice to the United Nations system on scientific aspects of marine environmental protection. In this group, Amy offers her expertise to assist on research and the preparation of a technical report on the monitoring and assessment of plastics and microplastics in the coastal and open ocean environment.

Her favorite part about her job is getting out into the field, and while her field work is now limited, she likes to take advantage of every opportunity to travel.

“As a NOAA scientific diver, my favorite memory from the field is pushing my way through a swirling mass of greater amberjacks off the coast of North Carolina while descending to the wreck of the W.E. Hutton (aka Papoose). Once clear of the large school of fish, we discovered, much to our delight, about 30 to 40 sand tiger sharks hanging out around the wreck,” Amy said.

WHEN SHE’S NOT at work or reading the many marine debris publications that pile up on her desk, Amy enjoys music and hiking. Though she says that now much of her free time goes toward pursuing a doctorate degree in integrative biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The reason I went back for my Ph.D was to challenge myself as a scientist,” Amy said. “I did this by choosing a terrestrial landscape ecologist as my advisor and in the process learned a lot about fires and bark beetles as vectors of disturbance in Yellowstone National Park. However many theories and approaches developed from terrestrial ecosystems are directly applicable to submerged marine landscapes.”

Her focus at the time had been on seagrass ecosystems, and she wanted to apply these approaches to her own research. She wanted to address the question of how physical disturbances, such as wind waves and tidal currents, influence seagrass landscapes and how that can leave them resilient or vulnerable to a changing climate, as well as extreme physical disturbances such as hurricanes.

Amy will be defending her dissertation in integrative biology on May 1, and will use her degree to further support her role as the chief scientist. She plans to continue her work with NOAA in the hopes of tackling the issue of marine debris.

“Marine debris is generated by humans; therefore it is a solvable problem,” Amy said. “My role will be to help our program support robust and rigorous research projects that advance and challenge our current understanding of the marine debris issue.”

The initial worst case discharge was 114,000 gallons based on the volume of the tank, but this was later revised to approximately 4,200 gallons. This initial uncertainty in spill volume is fairly common as it takes time to sound the tanks and check engineering and fueling records. The fuel oil had a high sulfur content, making odors a concern along the river and the New Orleans French Quarter.

Approximately 10 miles of the Mississippi River were closed to facilitate cleanup. The river was reopened on Friday, April 13, though shoreline cleanup and decontamination is ongoing. NOAA is supporting the U.S. Coast Guard and the Unified Command, focusing on identifying sensitive areas, forecasting the oil movements and fates, and tracking the cleanup activities.

For more information, visit IncidentNews or the U.S. Coast Guard 8th District Heartland News Room.

Many people are familiar with NOAA’s Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA^®) — an online mapping tool that integrates both static and real-time data — but not everyone knows where the idea for ERMA came from.

OR&R scientist Dr. Amy Merten’s idea for such a mapping tool was born from her frustration at the lack of a centralized, interactive mapping platform for information at spills she had responded to in the past, particularly following the spills resulting from the 2005 Hurricanes.

The project to develop this tool became a collaborative effort among the OR&R team, Dr. Nancy Kinner’s team from the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Coast Guard, and the Department of the Interior. The application was put to the test in 2010, when it was used as the common operating picture at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The ERMA team at OR&R was a 2011 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal Finalist for the creation of ERMA, which “helped crisis managers respond to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by providing critical information on the flow of oil, weather conditions, location of response vessels, shorelines in danger, and the impacts on fisheries and wildlife.”

After earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Colorado Boulder, Amy went on to pursue her master’s and doctorate both from the University of Maryland Chesapeake Biological Lab, where she focused on fate and effects of organic contaminants on benthos organisms in the food web.

Having developed an early interest in Arctic issues during her undergrad research, her experience with the Selendang Ayo, and from oil in ice research priorities through Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC), Amy served as Chair of the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Working Group (EPPR) from 2015 to 2017. The Arctic Council is the leading intergovernmental body promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the eight Arctic countries, Arctic indigenous communities, and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues. The specific focus of the EPPR is to protect the Arctic environment from the threat or impact of an accidental release of pollutants or radionuclides. Amy successfully chaired the EPPR for the two years that the U.S. held the Arctic Council Chairmanship.

She moved from the D.C. area to Seattle in 2003 to work as a response biologist in OR&R.  Since that time, while still in Seattle at OR&R, she has served as co-director of the CRRC (partnered with the University of New Hampshire) on oil spill and Arctic issues and while chief of OR&R’s Spatial Data Branch, led the Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) data management effort in the years following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Most recently, Amy accepted the position of the OR&R Assessment and Restoration Division’s Northwest and Great Lakes Branch Chief. Some of major sites this branch is focused on include Hanford Nuclear reservation and the Duwamish River industrial site in Washington State, Portland Harbor in Oregon, and the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Since Alaska is part of the Northwest region, Amy looks forward to representing OR&R on Arctic injury assessment, such as identifying effects of coastal pollution from oil spills and other sources.

Some of the challenges Amy faces are ensuring adequate time is spent building partnerships as well as striving to stay ahead of ever-changing requirements and technology. Throughout her career, she has found “working with talented, bright people focused on same mission,” the most satisfying aspect of her job.

Amy is a budding ukulele player and loves participating in triathlons and skiing. She lives in Seattle with her husband, Joel, and her Weimaraner, Greta.

This blog post was written by Vicki Loe, Office of Response and Restoration Communications Coordinator. 

For those who respond or prepare for spills of oil products, our next available Science of Oil Spills (SOS) class will be held June 11-15, 2018 in Seattle, Washington.

For those responding or preparing for chemical releases, we are offering a Science of Chemical Releases (SOCR) class June 25-28, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama.

These classes are designed to help spill responders and planners increase their understanding of spill science when preparing for and analyzing oil or chemical spills, and making risk-based decisions to protect public health, safety, and the environment.

They are designed to offer a broad, science-based approach to understanding the framework for spill responses for the purpose of:

• increasing awareness and preparedness, and
• reducing uncertainty and risk associated with these types of incidents

The classes are primarily intended for new and mid-level spill responders, planners, and stakeholders from government and public agencies. Upon completion of the class, students will be able to demonstrate increased awareness and preparedness by employing science-based decision-making in planning for and responding to spill incidents.

Learn more about SOS classes, including some frequently-asked questions, and complete the online application form. Applications for the Seattle SOS class will be accepted through Friday, March 30.

Learn more about SOCR classes and complete the online application form. Applications for the SOCR class in Mobile will be accepted through Friday, May 4.
 

Questions: Contact us with questions, comments, or suggestions about these classes.

Stay Updated: If you'd like to receive updates about our activities and events, including future SOS or SOCR classes, sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to our blog, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The CSX freight train was heading to Richmond, VA when it derailed between Cecil and Harford Counties at approximately 8:00 pm. The rail cars were empty so no environmental or human health impacts are expected. The cause of the accident remains under investigation. However, strong winds, with gusts up to 40-50 mph, may have been the cause. Federal, state, and local responders are all working cooperatively to remove the rail cars. Two rail cars have already been removed and CSX is bringing in crane barges to recover the two remaining rail cars from deeper water. These crane barges are expected to be on-scene by Monday, March 12 to begin removing the two remaining rail cars. The Office of Response and Restoration’s Emergency Response Division has been providing up-to-date weather forecasts to assist the U.S. Coast Guard and CSX contractors.

That's all great! But are the batteries fresh? Is your insurance coverage adequate? Have better evacuation routes been created? Have those phone numbers changed?

Preparedness requires continued vigilance to ensure that the best laid plans are reviewed regularly, equipment is maintained, and the plan is tested to make sure it works. Then, once you’ve tested your plan, you will probably find there are improvements to be made.

Being prepared is not a one time effort.

Through 40 years of emergency preparedness, response, and recovery experience, the Office of Response and Restoration knows that a truly effective preparedness posture requires constant vigilance and continuous improvement.

The international humanitarian response community has noted “resilience itself is not achievable without the capacity to absorb shocks, and it is this capacity that emergency preparedness helps to provide.”

The National Ocean Service agrees!

The Office of Response and Restoration is honored to support the National Ocean Service through the development of the Disaster Preparedness Program and its mission to prepare NOS and partners to respond to and recover from pollution events and natural disasters.

The 2017 hurricane season was the most costly hurricane season in U.S. history, with damages estimated at over $200 billion. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds that the U.S. should expect a greater incidence of high-intensity storms, producing substantially more rainfall. To address this and other escalating threats to coastal environments, communities, and economies, the National Ocean Service is bolstering its ability to respond quickly and effectively to coastal storms and other disasters.

The new program will expand on the current program activity of the Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center, and streamline existing operational capabilities and knowledge to ensure that commerce, communities and natural resources can recover as quickly as possible.

The Disaster Preparedness Program will focus on providing disaster response and recovery training, exercises, lessons learned and resources within NOAA and to our emergency response partners across the nation to ensure that we are in the best possible position to respond to coastal threats quickly, safely, and effectively.

From Aug. 27-Sept. 4, the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) collected damage assessment imagery in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The aerial imagery was collected in specific areas identified by FEMA and the National Weather Service. Image credit: NGS.

Acting NOAA Administrator RDML Tim Gallaudet provided an overview of the services that NOAA programs provided in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. A panel of NOAA staff and external partners provided in depth information on NOAA services. Rear Admiral Peter W. Gautier, Director of Governmental and Public Affairs for the US Coast Guard, highlighted services provided by the Office of Response and Restoration, including Scientific Support Coordinators and the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA). 

The briefing provided an opportunity for interested congressional staff to learn more about NOAA services during natural incidents and for Office of Response and Restoration to interact with NOAA and partner leadership. 

For more information contact Robin.Garcia@noaa.gov or Kate.Wheelock@noaa.gov. 

Return to OR&R Weekly.

This is the third in a 12-part monthly series profiling scientists and technicians who provide exemplary contributions to the mission of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R). This month’s profile is on 2017 Sea Grant Knauss Fellow Amanda Laverty.

Coming to the Marine Debris Program (MDP) from Old Dominion University, Amanda Laverty joined NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) in February as a 2017 Sea Grant Knauss Fellow.

Amanda’s deep love and desire to be near the ocean led her to earn a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in biological oceanography. The relationships she forged as an undergraduate led her to pursue a Master of Science under the supervision of Dr. Fred Dobbs at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Interested in both marine microbial ecology and marine pollution, she focused her thesis research on the potential for marine plastic pollution to carry and transmit bacteria and human pathogens.

As a graduate student, Amanda has presented her research at various scientific conferences. Through meaningful conversations with colleagues at these venues, she realized her interest in science management. While finishing her graduate degree, she learned about the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Program. This fellowship presented the perfect chance to learn about management and dive into the point where science and policy meet in our nation’s capital. With no direct policy experience, she hoped this fellowship would enrich her understanding of policy and contribute to her growth as a successful marine scientist.

During her fellowship, Amanda has had the unique opportunity to assist MDP on a wide variety of projects — ranging from the development of communications and outreach resources, to leading a Zero Waste Initiative for the upcoming Sixth International Marine Debris Conference. Through this initiative, co-hosts at NOAA and U.N. Environment aim to reduce the overall footprint of the conference by limiting single-use items and preventing marine debris.

Another major project Amanda has worked on has been to compile literature on the benefits of marine debris removal to marine and coastal ecosystems. With the assistance of Adam Domanski, formerly in OR&R’s Assessment and Restoration Division, this literature review will apply the most up-to-date science to habitat evaluations following an event that damages a habitat, such as a hazardous waste release, oil spill, or vessel grounding. Through Amanda’s work, marine debris removal can be scaled for restoration efforts, ultimately serving OR&R and external resource managers in decision-making.

During her fellowship year, one of Amanda’s most fulfilling experiences has been attending marine debris action-planning workshops. At these workshops, Amanda has served in a much-needed supporting role for the MDP. By interacting with leading experts in the field, she learned first hand how marine debris challenges are perceived, and ultimately managed, at a regional level.

OR&R puts out an annual report as an overview of the efforts in oil and chemical spill response, shoreline restoration, marine debris reduction, and the many other tasks OR&R handled during the previous fiscal year.

Here are some of the highlights from the 2017 Accomplishments Report:

Responding to Oil and Chemical spills

The Office of Response and Restoration's Emergency Response Division (ERD) supports the U.S. Coast Guard by providing round-the-clock scientific expertise for oil and chemical spills in marine and coastal waters.

In Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17), ERD responded to a total of 205 oil spills, chemical releases, and other threats — surpassing the previous record of 201 incident responses in 2009. To help improve incident response practices, ERD also made several advances to its digital toolkit — from the creation of a new mobile app for hazardous chemicals (CAMEO Chemicals) to added updates to the GNOME™ suite, a set of modeling tools for predicting the fate and transport of pollutants (such as oil) spilled in water.
 

Assessing and Restoring our Shores

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.

This year ARD received $5,130,000 through settlements from two oil spills and a waste site to be used for restoration. In FY17 NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration reached multiple agreements that will require companies to restore natural resources that were damaged following releases of industrial pollution — including an $8.2 million agreement to restore habitats on the St. Louis River in Minnesota, and the announcement of a large-scale restoration plan for the Portland Harbor region in Oregon.

Reducing Marine Debris on our Shores

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. The program also spearheads national research efforts and works to change behavior in the public through education and outreach initiatives.

For the previous fiscal year, the Marine Debris Program was awarded a total of $2,173,514 for marine debris research and removal projects. Some of the program’s projects included the quantification of microplastics in national park beaches, and a study to assess the impact of lost and abandoned crab pots on wildlife and the economy in the Chesapeake Bay.

Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center

NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center (DRC) brings together NOAA-wide resources to improve preparedness, planning, and response capacity for natural and man-made 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, training, workshops, and planning activities. During the last fiscal year, the DRC hosted 23 trainings and response events.

For more information on OR&R’s work during FY17, check out “2017 Accomplishments: The Year in Review.”

When oil or chemicals spill into our oceans and waterways, who can provide the chemical expertise we need to respond to the spill? Enter Dalina Thrift-Viveros, one of NOAA's hardworking chemists who does just that.

Dalina first joined the Emergency Response Division of NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration in 2011 as a contractor through information management consulting firm Genwest Systems, Inc. Dalina provides scientific support for oil and chemical spill responses and OR&R’s software programs.

An early passion for science and engineering brought Dalina to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry. The beautiful landscape of Seattle, and its proximity to both the ocean and mountains, led her to the University of Washington (UW), where she completed a Master of Science in chemistry. Her lab work at the UW involved chemical synthesis, with a focus on organometallic synthesis (synthesis involving metal and organic components).

Dalina taught chemistry at South Seattle Community College after she graduated, but at the suggestion of a former classmate she applied for a position in OR&R’s Emergency Response Division (ERD). Selected from a group of candidates for the ERD position, she initially worked on a two-year long literature project related to the Chemical Reactivity Worksheet (CRW), a software program that estimates the chemical reactivity of thousands of common hazardous chemicals.

She also helped integrate this information into the CAMEO Chemicals program, which is part of the CAMEO® suite of chemical response tools. Initially a collaboration between NOAA and the EPA, the award-winning CRW most recently involved collaboration between government, industry, and NGOs, and it was successfully transitioned to the Center for Chemical Process Safety in 2016.

Dalina has also supported other OR&R software products in the CAMEO suite, such as CAMEO Chemicals and ALOHA®. She was instrumental in adding the biodegradation model to OR&R’s oil weathering model, ADIOS®, now part of the GNOME suite for oil spill modeling.

The Office of Response and Restoration’s Assessment and Restoration Division focuses on assessing harm to natural resources caused by oil and chemical spills. The goal of the assessment process, known as “natural resource damage assessment” (NRDA), is to quantify and scale injuries to natural resources over time following exposure to oil, petroleum products, and hazardous substances to seek restoration or replacement of those resources. Examples of natural resources in the context of NRDA include fish, shellfish, mammals, birds, the habitats where these animals exist, and the food sources they rely on for survival.

Under existing U.S. laws, NOAA is a trustee on behalf of the public for the marine environment and associated species of plants and animals. But trusteeship is not limited to NOAA; other federal agencies, states, and many Native American tribes are also authorized under existing laws to act as natural resource trustees. Thus NOAA’s Assessment and Restoration Division works with Native American tribes all over the country on NRDA projects. Perhaps no other place better exemplifies the extent that NOAA and Native American tribes collaborate on these assessment projects than the Pacific Northwest.

NOAA’s primary focus in damage assessment is the documentation of ecological losses and associated impacts to human uses such as recreational activities and, ultimately, restoration projects aimed at addressing those losses. In the Northwest, NOAA’s damage assessment work often focuses on salmon (e.g., Chinook, Coho, Steelhead trout, etc.) and their habitats. Many stocks of salmon are under threat in the Northwest from a range of stressors including dams, development, changing climates and ocean conditions, and, of course, urban and industrial pollution. It is difficult to understate the historic, cultural, and spiritual significance of salmon to Northwest Native American tribes. For countless generations before the arrival of Europeans and the westward expansion of the United States, tribal peoples relied on salmon as a primary source of food. Salmon were plentiful, easy to harvest during certain seasons, and a tremendous source of energy and nutrition — not to mention delicious. The well-being of tribal cultures and salmon are deeply and inextricably intertwined in this region of the country. Though the interests of NOAA and many Northwest tribes with respect to salmon are different, they also overlap substantially. Many Northwest tribes recognize that the damage assessment process is an important tool to help protect and restore salmon. Furthermore, they have become proficient practitioners of NRDA and outstanding partners.

In Oregon and Washington, NOAA is involved in numerous NRDA cases. Some are relatively small and short-lived while others are complex, expensive, longstanding affairs. In virtually all of these projects — far too many to discuss here — NOAA is working with tribal partners to conduct assessment and restoration activities.

For example, NOAA and its natural resource co-trustees are deeply involved in an NRDA at the Portland Harbor Superfund Site on the lower Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. NOAA shares a seat on the Portland Harbor Trustee Council with the U.S. Department of the Interior (Fish and Wildlife Service), the state of Oregon, and no fewer than five tribes: the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe.

At the Lower Duwamish River in Seattle, NOAA leads a trustee council along with the state of Washington, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Suquamish Tribe and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.

At the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia River in Washington, NOAA is one of nine natural resource trustees, including three tribes: the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Nez Perce Tribe.

At Port Angeles Harbor in Port Angeles, Washington, NOAA is working with the State Department of Ecology, the U.S. Department of the Interior (Fish and Wildlife Service), and three tribes: the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

In all these natural resource damage assessment cases, the tribal trustees are providing critical expertise and leadership.

Keep your eye on our blog and the Marine Debris blog throughout the week for more on our critical partnerships with native communities.

Nov. 14, 2017 — NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R), a leader in providing scientific information in response to marine pollution, offers several Science of Oil Spills (SOS) classes annually for spill responders to increase their understanding of oil spill science. Registration is now open for this year's spring sessions:

• Mobile, Alabama the week of March 26, 2018
• Lewes, Delaware the week of April 9, 2018

OR&R will accept applications for these classes as follows:

• The application period for the Mobile class will run through Jan. 19, 2018. We will email applicants regarding their application status no later than Feb. 2.
• The application period for the Lewes class will run through Jan. 26, 2018. We will email applicants regarding their application status no later than Feb. 9.

SOS classes help spill responders increase their understanding of oil spill science when analyzing spills and making risk-based decisions. They are designed for new and mid-level spill responders. The trainings cover:

• Fate and behavior of oil spilled in the environment.
• An introduction to oil chemistry and toxicity.
• A review of basic spill response options for open water and shorelines.
• Spill case studies.
• Principles of ecological risk assessment.
• A field trip.
• An introduction to damage assessment techniques.
• Determining cleanup endpoints.

To view the topics for the next SOS class, download a sample agenda [PDF, 170 KB].

Please understand that classes are not filled on a first-come, first-served basis. We try to diversify the participant composition to ensure a variety of perspectives and experiences, to enrich the workshop for the benefit of all participants. Classes are generally limited to 40 participants.

For more information, and to learn how to apply for the class, visit the SOS Classes page.

Starting to Rebuild

Though a decade has now passed since the Cosco Busan oil spill, restoration efforts are still underway in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

As of 2017, nearly $20 million has been allocated to over 50 projects, designed to enhance and restore habitats, animals and public recreation that were affected. For some injured resources such as migratory birds, the best way to restore them are to undertake actions elsewhere on the west coast such as the Klamath Basin. The funds available for restoration, about $30 million, are part of a $44.4 million settlement with Regal Stone Limited and Fleet Management Limited, the companies responsible for the spill from the container ship Cosco Busan.

Settlement funds have gone to the restoration of shoreline habitats, with projects to restore sandy beach, salt marsh and mudflats, as well as the creation of new habitats for bird species such as cormorants, pelicans and shorebirds. Among these projects are two that focus on the restoration of plant species imperative to the Bay’s ecosystem — eelgrass (Zostera marina) and Rockweed (Fucus distichus).

Eelgrass Restoration

Eelgrass is a subtidal grass that lives in shallow waters from nearshore to several meters in depth. The most common in the San Francisco Bay Estuary is of the genus Zostera. Eelgrass beds and meadows are teeming with life  — serving as habitat for amphipods and other invertebrates, fish that feed and breed in the beds, and even for birds who forage in eelgrass beds at low tide.

Immediately following the Cosco Busan oil spill, there was limited evidence to suggest any serious injury to the eelgrass plants of the area, said Dr. Katharyn E. Boyer, biology professor at San Francisco State University’s Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies. “It was the impact to herring, which spawn on eelgrass, that was really the large motivation behind eelgrass being a restoration target.”

Boyer took part in the assessment phase after the spill, using the university’s lab as a home base and searching along the shorelines for signs of damage to the eelgrass. Seven years after the spill occurred Boyer, along with Keith Merkel of Merkel and Associates, began working on eelgrass restoration in the Bay Area using funds from the settlement.

From 2014 to 2016, they focused on planting and dispersing seeds in Richardson Bay, Corte Madera Bay, and San Rafael Bay, and continually monitored the plots. Restoration efforts during this time revealed natural variability in environmental conditions to be an added obstacle. After planting, multiple plots appeared to have done well initially, only to decline and fail the following season.

Extreme temperatures, drought conditions, extreme freshwater outflows and low salinities have made it difficult for the new plants to survive and in many cases resulted in a significant reduction of eelgrass, in both the restoration plots and in other existing eelgrass beds.

“It’s been interesting to do restoration when these large-scale variabilities are going on,” Boyer said. “But this summer we were able to see these plants, that I honestly thought were a total loss, start to come back.”

This year the group decided to take a break from actively planting eelgrass to see if the plots already planted will continue to bounce back on their own. Site visits in December will monitor progress, with the expectation of planting again in 2018.

Rockweed Restoration

Fucus, commonly called rockweed, is an intertidal alga that provides food and shelter to a variety of other organisms. As an intertidal plant, rockweed has an increased likelihood of coming into contact with floating oil.

After the Cosco Busan oil spill, intertidal researchers with the University of California, Santa Cruz were able to rush out ahead of the oil and get initial population numbers in a few sites. From those numbers they discovered a decline in Fucus distichus populations along the East San Francisco Bay after the oil hit the shoreline.

Among the more affected areas after the spill, Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in the City of Richmond was heavily oiled. Both the oil and the high-powered hot water cleaning performed by responders scoured the shoreline leaving it uninhabited for some time. Fucus donor material was harvested along the nearby shoreline of Golden Gate Fields for strategic transplanting to Point Isabel.

“There isn’t necessarily a prescribed way to restore Fucus … So we’re trying to figure out a way to not just deplete a one-source population,” said Laura Anderson, intertidal research associate at UCSC.

In 2015, the group began monitoring the progress of the rockweed on a monthly basis, but they weren’t initially seeing a huge change in growth. Similar to the eelgrass, rockweed was also affected by the increased natural variability in water conditions in recent years.

Despite the challenging conditions, Anderson said the plants seem to have restored enough that the team felt they could walk away and wait out 2017 to see what happens next before continuing their restoration efforts.

In a report, the UCSC team noted, “The Fucus has recovered to a point where no further intervention is required because further increases will occur through local reproduction.”

Moving Forward and Looking Ahead

Though 2017 has marked a year to sit back and see what happens for both eelgrass and rockweed, restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area are far from over.

For Fucus, the restoration goal identified in the Cosco Busan restoration plan is to restore 1,000 meters of the alga along shorelines that were impacted. At Point Isabel, Anderson says there is now about 400 meters established and growing along the shoreline. To reach the restoration plan goal, the team has decided next to transplant additional Fucus to a different site. They will transplant more than 600 linear meters of Fucus at Marina Park in San Leandro in the hopes of reaching the total of 1,000 meters.

The next phase in eelgrass restoration is to start planting again in 2018 and move to other sites along the East Bay. The objective is to plant approximately 36 acres, yielding 70 acres in total through expansion of the new beds. But the amount of time this will take may rely more heavily on the natural variability of the area than the restoration efforts themselves, Merkel said, “To be really candid, we need things to really calm down in the Bay.”

“It’s hard to not get discouraged when you have some progress and then have an event that just wipes things out,” Boyer said. “It’s a sign of things to come. We’re going to have more variable climates that we’re going to have to respond to. If we can learn how to do it from the success of doing it now, we’ll be better prepared for it in the future.”

Progress in restoring essential habitats is not the only benefit to come from the Cosco Busan settlement; NOAA and its partners are also learning better ways to support these habitats well into the future.

Resources

To learn more about the Cosco Busan oil spill, you can also visit the resources below:

• Cosco Busan oil spill image gallery
• Making Waves podcast: episode 84 “Cosco Busan Settlement,” and episode 91, “Restoring San Francisco Bay.”
• Related articles:
  • $36.8 Million Settlement to Restore Natural Resources and Improve Recreational Opportunities in Areas Affected by Cosco Busan Oil Spill Will Address Impacts from Ship that Struck the Bay Bridge
  • $44 Million Natural Resource Damage Settlement to Restore San Francisco Bay After Cosco Busan Oil Spill
  • DARRP Team Members Receive Award for Work on Cosco Busan Oil Spill Settlement
  • Buoys Serve as Latest Gardening Tool for Restoring Eelgrass in San Francisco Bay
• California Department Fish and Wildlife
• Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program Cosco Busan case page 
• National Transportation Board accident report and presentation

On Nov. 7, 2007 reports on the Cosco Busan spill reached Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Staff of the Sanctuary and Greater Farallones Association began to mobilize Farallones Beach Watch volunteers. Sanctuary headquarters in San Francisco at the Presidio’s Crissy Field Beach was transformed into the initial Command Post for the incident’s Natural Resources Damage Assessment. The garage became an intake station where dozens of trained staff and volunteers processed dead birds and hundreds of samples of oil, sediment and biota using forensic protocols for handling evidence, chain-of-custody and cataloguing. The sanctuary reshuffled staffing from the top down, and at dawn, Nov. 8, beach watchers hit the beaches at several outer coast sites, with full protective gear and monitoring equipment to perform pre-spill assessments before the oil could reach sanctuary beaches.

Beach Watch is a monitoring program supervised by staff biologists, where highly trained volunteer citizen scientists regularly document the condition of sanctuary shores. In the course of frequent field surveys they become experts on specific beaches, knowledgeable about what species feed, rest or transit through and their seasonality. Surveyors methodically catalogue live and dead marine life, and oil which occasionally strands on the region’s beaches throughout the year. Trained in forensic protocols for gathering evidence, the pre-spill and post-spill data gathered by Beach Watch teams represented a key element in assessing adverse changes caused by the spill. At a Senate subcommittee hearing the sanctuary and Beach Watch were singled out for praise due to their preparedness and detailed knowledge of these resources.