preparedness

This weekend, NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary System is kicking off the beginning of the national “Get into Your Sanctuary” Initiative. The sanctuary system protects America’s most iconic natural and cultural marine resources — many of which are open to public recreation. This initiative is a system-wide public outreach effort to raise awareness about our nation’s marine sanctuaries through site events and other activities.

When a disaster occurs, it’s critical that the organizations involved in the response can communicate and share information quickly and effectively.

That means groups as diverse and numerous as emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, emergency medical, and responders from local, state, tribal, and federal governments all need to be on the same page. At NOAA, we’re working with our partners to help ensure that the information responders need flows quickly and accurately—when they need it.

As part of our ongoing commitment to share our expertise in spill response with other nations, the Emergency Response Division recently hosted a delegation from China’s National Marine Hazard Mitigation Service.

The Chinese agency requested the meeting to learn about our strategies and tools for responding to environmental hazards and to exchange information about China’s marine emergency response programs.

What does wearing a life jacket have in common with preventing oil spills? Wearing life jackets can save people’s lives; preventing small oil spills helps protect marine life.

National Safe Boating Week is May 22-26. As part of the campaign launch, the National Safe Boating Council, in partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard, is encouraging people to wear life jackets to work on May 19. The Coast Guard estimates that over 80 percent of the lives lost to drowning could have been preventing by wearing life jackets.

NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration’s Emergency Response Division returned to Prince William Sound to use some of the old buried oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to improve how we can find oil on the shoreline in the future.

This time, the key player was an enthusiastic black Labrador retriever named Pepper. This project is to validate and better understand the capabilities of trained oil detection canines to locate and delineate subsurface stranded oil. The results of the study have a high probability of immediate, short-term applications and long-term real benefits in the design and implementation of shoreline cleanup and assessment technique surveys for stranded oil.

The Arctic is one of the most remote regions on the planet but that may change as the sea ice continues to shrink, allowing for more ships, tourism, fishing, and possible oil exploration in the region. More activity also brings the possibility of oil spills and other environmental disasters.