Conservation & Environment Archives

Biden-Harris Administration, NOAA designate 18th national marine sanctuary

January 17, 2025 — NOAA is designating the marine portions of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a 582,570 square-mile area in the Pacific Ocean, as America’s 18th national marine sanctuary. Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary will be the largest sanctuary in the National Marine Sanctuary System, and is one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world.

Located in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary will provide additional ways to manage and protect the area’s nationally significant biological, cultural and historical resources.

Sanctuary designation will not change the area’s status as a marine national monument. The sanctuary designation advances President Biden’s ocean conservation legacy and his America the Beautiful initiative, which supports locally-led, collaborative conservation efforts across the country.

“National marine sanctuary designation will bring a stronger framework for marine conservation and protection to the waters of Papahānaumokuākea,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “The Sanctuary will also facilitate scientific research, resource monitoring and coordinated efforts to ensure the long-term health of this natural, cultural and historically significant area.”

NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries will co-manage the sanctuary with the State of Hawaiʻi and in partnership with NOAA Fisheries, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, consistent with the existing management of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

NOAA dumps controversial boat speed limit at heart of debate over protecting right whales

January 17, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has withdrawn its proposal to expand boat speed limits to protect North Atlantic right whales after more than two years of debate and over 90,000 public comments.

The decision brought some relief to boat builders and fishermen who saw it as the biggest maritime regulation ever proposed on the recreational boating industry.

“It would have made it tough very tough on us. We fish wrecks 60 to 70 miles offshore in the winter and you can’t get anywhere going 10 knots,” said Howard Bogan Jr. owner of the Jamaica party fishing boat at Bogan’s Basin in Brielle.

Bogan and his family, which has been running party boats out of Brielle since 1931, opposed the speed restrictions, which compounded with tightening fisheries regulations would have made it even harder for their business to provide food, entertainment and enjoyment to thousands who visit the Jersey Shore each year.

Read the full article at Asbury Park Press

Saving eelgrass, the most important plant you’ve likely never heard of

January 16, 2025 — Matthew Long peers over the side of the research boat Calanus, into the dark water of Hadley Harbor, about 2 miles from Woods Hole.

There’s a meadow down there, according to Long, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Acres of a willowy green plant called eelgrass.

Eelgrass is the dominant species of seagrass in New England, but it’s little-known and largely unsung. And no wonder — it’s impossible to see from shore and barely visible from the boat.

But Long assures me it’s there. As his colleagues put on scuba gear to collect samples, he ticks off the reasons why healthy eelgrass meadows are critical for the New England coast.

Read the full article at wbur

Over 75 right whales – 20% of endangered population – spotted off Maine coast

January 16, 2025 — Dozens of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales were spotted in the Gulf of Maine this week, researchers from the New England Aquarium said Thursday.

An aerial survey team from the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life spotted the whales on Jan. 12 and 13, counting more than 75 unique individuals. Only around 370 right whales remain in existence, meaning the sightings account for around 20% of the population. The whales were gathered and feeding near the western edge of Jeffreys Ledge, where they’ve been seen in the past.

Many of the whales are known to researchers, including Millipede,” an adult female who had a calf in 2021, and “Loki,” an adult of unknown sex who has been seen just six times in 20 years and only in New England waters, and “Nimbus”, a 16-year-old male who was entangled in fishing rope in 2023.

Read the full article at NBC Boston

More Than $1 Million Recommended for Ruth D. Gates Coral Restoration Innovation Grants Projects

January 16, 2025 — To restore resilient coral ecosystems, NOAA has recommended more than $1 million in funding for three new projects and one ongoing, multi-year project. These efforts are supported under the Ruth D. Gates Coral Restoration Innovation Grants. The funding will support projects that enhance coral resilience and improve the long-term success and efficiency of shallow-water coral reef restoration in the face of climate change, including continued heat stress.

Globally, coral reefs are rapidly declining in health. We have learned much about how to scale up coral restoration efforts in the past several years. We must continue to develop innovative interventions to restore resilient, genetically diverse, and reproductively viable coral populations at a larger scale.

Read the full article at NOAA

Hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River kill salmon. Congress says it’s time to consider shutting them down

January 16, 2025 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it could make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building gigantic mechanical traps and hauling baby fish downstream in tanker trucks. The Corps started pressing forward over objections from fish advocates and power users who said the plan was costly and untested.

That was until this month, when President Joe Biden signed legislation ordering the Corps to put its plans on hold and consider a simpler solution: Stop using the dams for electricity.

The new law, finalized on Jan. 4, follows reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 that underscored risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is projected to lose $700 million over 30 years generating hydropower, and a scientific review found that the type of fixes the Corps is proposing would not stop the extinction of threatened salmon.

The mandate says the Corps needs to shelve designs for its fish collectors — essentially massive floating vacuums expected to cost $170 million to $450 million each — until it finishes studying what the river system would look like without hydropower. The Corps must then include that scenario in its long-term designs for the river.

Read the full article at OPB

East Coast ‘slow zone’ to protect endangered whales withdrawn

January 16, 2025 — Federal officials have withdrawn a proposed slow zone for ferries, ships and large boats along the U.S. East Coast after months of heated criticism from Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and other coastal communities. Whale conservationists lamented the move as a major loss, saying the proposal was a “much-needed” effort to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from extinction.

In a document filed Wednesday morning, officials from a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they decided to withdraw the plan after receiving 90,000 public comments — many of which included requests for more public engagement.

“Despite its best efforts, [the National Marine Fisheries Service] does not have sufficient time to finalize this regulation in this Administration due to the scope and volume of public comments,” the filing said. “NMFS hereby withdraws the August 2022 proposed rule and terminates this rulemaking proceeding.”

Read the full article at Connecticut Public

Biden administration withdraws rules to save endangered whales from collisions

January 15, 2025 — The federal government is withdrawing a proposal that would require more ships to slow down in East Coast waters to try to save a vanishing species of whale, officials said Wednesday.

The move in the waning days of the Biden administration will leave the endangered North Atlantic right whale vulnerable to extinction as the Trump administration is signaling a shift from environmental conservation to support for marine industries, conservation groups said. But federal authorities said there’s no way to implement the rules before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.

The new vessel speed rules proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service more than two years ago have been the topic of much debate among shippers, commercial fishermen and wildlife conservationists, who all have a stake in the whale’s fate. The whale, which is vulnerable to collisions with ships, numbers less than 380 and its population has plummeted in recent years.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Biden protects Delaware’s coast from offshore drilling

January 14, 2025 — With the clock ticking down on his time in office, President Joe Biden announced Jan. 6 that he has permanently protected more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean from offshore drilling.

Delaware’s coastline falls within this ban. In all, the area includes the entire eastern U.S. Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico; the Pacific coast along California, Oregon, and Washington; and the remaining portion of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area in Alaska.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” said Biden in a statement announcing the ban.

This isn’t the first action to protect Delaware’s coastline from offshore drilling. Back in 2018, state legislators passed two bills prohibiting oil and natural gas drilling in state waters.

Read the full article at the Cape Gazette

NOAA model designed to help assess coastal flood risks

Janauary 13, 2025 — Coastal communities along the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf coasts can now better assess changing flood risks using a newly released model created by the National Ocean Service.

The service, which falls under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on Monday launched Coastal Ocean Reanalysis, or CORA, a dataset that includes more than four decades of modeled, historical water level and wave information roughly every quarter mile along the U.S. coastline.

CORA closes what have been in some areas of the coast huge gaps in water level data collection that left some coastal communities without such information. That’s because historical data was until today available at NOAA’s tide gauge locations, which can be hundreds of miles apart along some areas of the coast.

“Historical coastal water level information is necessary to assess changing flood risks to communities and to predict the likelihood of flooding,” National Ocean Service Director Nicole LeBoeuf said in a release. “This new dataset will improve NOAA’s current flood-risk assessment tools and help scientists develop new coastal flood products and services for the nation.”

Read the full article at the CostalReview.org