NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, in partnership with Murrain Associates, Inc., and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers (NABS), today launched Voyage to Discovery, a new website and education initiative highlighting untold stories of African-Americans and the sea.
NOAA will reopen 4,213 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to royal red shrimping on Feb. 2, 2011. The area was closed to this type of deep water fishing on Nov. 24 as a precautionary measure after a commercial shrimper discovered tar balls in his net.
A young critically endangered female right whale died recently as a result of becoming entangled in hundreds of feet of rope. Despite efforts by teams of disentanglement experts, the whale was unable to overcome the impacts of the ropes, which at one point were embedded in her body.
