Even before Sandy hit the New Jersey shore, NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey was mobilizing to respond to the emergency, preparing vessels, personnel, and equipment to conduct hydrographic surveys of hard-hit areas, searching for the underwater debris and shoaling that can paralyze shipping at the nation’s ports.
Continue reading “Thomas Jefferson night work gives go-ahead for fuel barge delivery into New York – New Jersey”
Post-SANDY navigation response in full swing
NOAA’s navigation response teams and other survey assets are in the water (or soon will be) as they respond to SANDY’s destruction, checking for underwater debris and shoaling that may pose a risk to navigation. Tasked by the U.S. Coast Guard Captains of the Port, NOAA vessels can use multibeam echo sounders or side scan sonar, as conditions warrant, to search for the answers that speed resumption of shipping and other vessel movements.
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NOAA Ship Rainier completes year’s surveys along Alaskan archipelago, heads home to Newport
NOAA Ship Rainier is due to arrive at its homeport in Newport, Ore., on November 1, completing the ship’s 2012 hydrographic survey season. (Watch Rainier’s progress on NOAA’s Ship Tracker.) This survey season, Rainier departed Newport on May 17 and spent her summer mapping 604 square nautical miles of the ocean floor in Alaska, stretching from Kodiak to the Shumagin Islands, along the Alaskan archipelago.
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NOAA Ship Hassler starts post-SANDY survey of deep draft routes to Hampton Roads and Baltimore
NOAA’s newest survey ship, the Ferdinand R. Hassler, began survey operations today in support of the U.S. Coast Guard efforts to re-open the Port of Virginia. Hassler was in port at NOAA’s Marine Operations Center – Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia, for maintenance when Hurricane Sandy affected the area. The ship’s crew spent Monday completing the work and system tests necessary to get underway once the storm passed, and has now been returned to limited operational status.
Continue reading “NOAA Ship Hassler starts post-SANDY survey of deep draft routes to Hampton Roads and Baltimore”
NOAA deploys personnel and survey assets to speed resumption of shipping after Sandy – Update 29 Oct
As conditions go downhill, NOAA is deploying personnel and hydrographic survey assets to help speed the resumption of shipping after SANDY clears out.
Coast Survey has deployed navigation managers from outside Hurricane Sandy’s areas of impact, supplemented with headquarters personnel, moving them to areas expected to be hit hard. Navigation managers are now at U.S. Coast Guard Incident Command Centers for New York – New Jersey and for Delaware Bay. We are also working with Coast Guard Captains of the Port for Virginia, Baltimore, and New England. NOAA’s navigation managers are working with the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers to coordinate deployment of NOAA’s navigation response teams (NRT) for rapid maritime response. They are also identifying vessels of opportunity, for potential use with Coast Survey’s mobile survey team (MIST).
Continue reading “NOAA deploys personnel and survey assets to speed resumption of shipping after Sandy – Update 29 Oct”
NOAA pre-positions survey assets for SANDY maritime response
As Hurricane SANDY heads north along the Atlantic coast, NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey is deep into preparations for maritime rapid response. Two objectives stand out: move navigation response personnel and assets into position to move quickly once SANDY moves out; and batten down survey vessels, to protect them from storm damage.
Coast Survey regularly responds to requests for quick navigation surveys after storms and other damaging events, pulling vessels from their normal survey schedules and deploying them to ports that need hydrographic surveys before they can resume full-fledged shipping.
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NOAA and American Pilots’ Association sign Memorandum of Agreement to advance safe navigation
Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation & Prediction, signed an agreement today that recognizes the longstanding working relationship between marine pilots and NOAA’s navigational services. Coast Survey has a long-term working relationship with the American Pilots’ Association, whose members include virtually all of the 1,200 state-licensed marine pilots working in the 24 coastal states and the Great Lakes. This agreement updates an earlier collaborative agreement between APA and NOAA. Continue reading “NOAA and American Pilots’ Association sign Memorandum of Agreement to advance safe navigation”
NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson mapping Long Island Sound seafloor: contributing to multi-level collaboration
How many geospatial products can be developed by one seafloor mapping project? As a phased-in project for Long Island Sound shows, a strong collaboration among diverse groups of researchers and technology developers can integrate temporal and geospatial data sources to produce dozens of products. In addition to updating NOAA’s nautical charts, ongoing collaborations in Long Island Sound will create products that depict physical, geological, ecological, geomorphological, and biological conditions and processes – all to balance the development of new ocean uses while protecting and restoring essential habitats.
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Combining expertise makes for better nautical charts and better understanding of fish habitats in Alaska
Today’s post is written by a guest blogger, Dr. Bob McConnaughey. Bob is the FISHPAC project chief scientist, with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
Fishery biologists and hydrographers in NOAA are working together to solve two very important problems in the eastern Bering Sea. This area is one of the richest and most productive fishing grounds in the world. Careful management of harvest levels is one part of the effort to sustain these populations into the future. However, it is also important to understand the habitat requirements of the managed species so we can protect the foundation for these high levels of production.
To this end, a team of scientists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) is developing mathematical models to explain the distribution and abundance of groundfish, such as pollock and cod, and benthic invertebrates, such as red king crab, in order to determine their essential habitats. The research team gathers new environmental data at locations where other AFSC scientists sample fish populations during annual bottom-trawl surveys. In many cases, existing habitat information is very limited, but studies will identify useful variables and the best tools for measuring them over large areas of the continental shelf. Continue reading “Combining expertise makes for better nautical charts and better understanding of fish habitats in Alaska”
The quiet history of Coast Survey
As NOAA strives to meet the present and future navigational needs of the maritime transportation system, it is sometimes helpful ‒ not to mention inspirational ‒ to look back at history. Coast Survey has an amazing history that isn’t well known. It is a quiet history of men and women who led the country’s mapping and charting advancements in the centuries since Thomas Jefferson authorized the Survey of the Coast in 1807.
Coast Survey maintains a publicly accessible Historical Maps and Charts Collection, with about 35,000 images that anyone can download and print. For history buffs, searching through the images is a great way to find images related to your area of interest. Exploring the charts, one can almost develop personal relationships with the individual Coast Survey assistants and cartographers who produced some truly beautiful work. (Check out the Civil War Special Collection to find some especially intriguing maps, including the pivotal 1861 map showing the density of slave population in the Southern states.) Or you can spend some quality time browsing through little-known sketches and maps in the historical collection maintained by the NOAA Central Library.
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