NOAA Research News

Over the next four months, NOAA scientists will launch unmanned ocean vehicles, called Saildrones, from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific Ocean to help better understand how changes in the ocean are affecting weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals. The wind and solar-powered research vehicles that resemble a sailboat will travel thousands of miles across the ocean, reaching some areas never before surveyed with such specialized technology. 

Long known for weather forecasting and climate prediction, NOAA is pioneering a new type of forecasting -- fish forecasting.  Meet Désirée Tommasi, Ph.D., a young oceanographer working at  NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. who has just published research about forecasting the Pacific sardine, one of the nation’s most storied fish, made famous by John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.

For Bill Mook, coastal acidification is one thing his oyster hatchery cannot afford to ignore.

He teamed up with fisherman-turned-oceanographer Joe Salisbury of the University of New Hampshire to adapt and install a new tool to help shellfish growers better prepare for ocean acidification.

NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) and the Northeast Sea Grant Programs joined together to prioritize and fund new research on how ocean acidification is affecting marine life including lobsters, clams, oysters, mussels and sand lance that are so important to the Northeast region. Funding includes $800,000 in federal funds from the two programs with an additional $400,000 non-federal match.

NOAA Research and NOAA Fisheries have teamed up with academic and private sector partners to test innovative technologies that, if successful, will enable researchers to gather information on ocean conditions and marine species in remote areas of the ocean that are costly to reach and difficult to study.