Sea Grant

This week, we’re taking a look at the different types of urban industrial pollution, how NOAA responds to pollution events and aids in the recovery of natural resources lost due to pollution, and what you can do to help keep pollution out of your waterway. Stay tuned as we explore these topics through a series of blogs. In our latest blog, NOAA’s Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant pollution prevention extension specialist Sarah Zack shares tips for how to reduce your household pollution footprint.

Oil spills can damage the environment and the wildlife and marine life that depend on it. They can also cause physical, mental, and financial stress to people as individuals. But even at a larger social level, like a community, oil spills can threaten the order of things.

In a recent Sea Grant workshop, as part of the series “Regional priority setting for health, social, and economic disruption from spills,” community members, emergency responders, and researchers gathered to discuss the physical, mental, social, economic, cultural, and spiritual impacts from oil spills.

From March 30 to April 20, tune in as we go back in time to the day of our country’s largest marine oil spill, what’s happened since then, and how we’re better prepared for future spills. In this guest blog from our partners at the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, learn more about oil spill science communicator Tara Skelton’s experiences as a resident of the Gulf of Mexico during Deepwater Horizon, and what she’s learned since then. 

Having already gotten a slew of sunny days and with more out on the radar to come, boating season has officially arrived in Pacific Northwest towns such as Gig Harbor, Washington. For many, this is a welcome change from the dreary days that now feel well behind us. But more boats in Puget Sound can also have some yucky downsides. It can mean more sewage getting into our beloved waters.

In 2016, Washington Sea Grant, Washington State Parks, and  U.S. Fish & Wildlife worked together to divert a record 10 million gallons of raw sewage from Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and other state waterways. Sewage that otherwise would have been dumped into vulnerable waters.

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.

Two popular marine animals—dolphins and sea turtles—are the focus of new publications from the Sea Grant Oil Spill Science Outreach Team. In the aftermath of the largest oil spill in history, many expressed concern about its impact on these long-lived, slow-to-mature creatures. Now, almost seven years after the spill, scientists have a better understanding of how they fared. The team examined this research, synthesizing peer-reviewed findings into two easy-to-understand outreach bulletins.