February 16, 2011

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has issued regulations and a letter of authorization to the U.S. Navy that includes measures to protect marine mammals while conducting the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet training operations at the Gulf of Mexico Range Complex. The regulations and authorization letter require the Navy to take measures to protect and minimize impacts to marine mammals.

The ozone layer – the thin atmospheric band high-up in the stratosphere that protects living things on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, not to be confused with damaging ozone pollution close to the ground – faces potential new challenges even as it continues its recovery from earlier damage, according to a recently released international science assessment.