science

Remembering Rachel Carson and the books that ignited the environmental movement for Women's History Month.

March is Women's History Month, a federal celebration honoring the achievements of women’s contributions to American history. Recognizing the achievements of women creates role models for the next generation and inspires women and girls to reach their full potentials. This is particularly important in the sciences.

On a drizzly November day, I met Simeon Hahn at Phoenix Park in Camden, New Jersey to talk about his work. As a Philadelphia native, I wanted to learn more about the work NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration does in the area. It was also an opportunity for me to get to know Simeon, an environmental scientist and regional resource coordinator with OR&R.

Simeon grew up in the natural beauty of the Shenandoah Valley in Waynesboro, Virginia. His parents came from the Black Forest area in Germany, and later bought a cabin and land adjacent to the George Washington National Forest in Virginia.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in significant environmental harm over a large area of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent shorelines.

A special issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series published Aug. 3, 2017, features 9 scientific articles summarizing the impacts of the oil spill on northern Gulf of Mexico shorelines and nearshore areas.  The scientific studies, conducted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration authors and partners, document four key findings based on five years of data collection and study.

Have you ever wanted to see an eel climb a ladder? Or explore a research vessel?  How about learning to fish or watch a scuba diver?  And did you ever think you could do all that in New York City?

Well, you can do all that and more with NOAA scientists and other experts at the Submerge NYC Marine Science Festival on Saturday, Sept. 16. This is the fourth year that Hudson River Park will host the event.

The free daylong science festival brings together researchers and scientists to talk to people about marine life and conservation. NOAA scientists from our Damage Assessment and Restoration Program and Marine Debris Program, as well as the Northeast Fisheries Science Center will be on hand to explain our work protecting the coastal environment from hazardous waste, oil, and marine debris and restoring habitat and biota.

What do you do with excess beakers, boxes of test tubes, wind gauges, oceanographic buoys, and other science equipment that has been phased out of routine operations? In the spirit of reuse of viable material and the reduction of needless waste, you give it to other scientific organizations.

What is toxicity? Most definitions would explain it as the degree to which a substance is poisonous.

Knowing a substance’s toxic levels is particularly important to federal agencies that use the information to test potential risks posed to people’s health and to the environment.

So how do scientists know how toxic something is and whether or not that substance—be it oil, chemical treating agents or toxic metals—will be toxic when introduced into marine or coastal waters?

The environmental toll from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster was enormous, demanding a massive deployment of people and materials to measure the adverse effects.

Federal and state agencies worked quickly to scale up the emergency response, clean up the spill, mount a large-scale effort to assess the injuries to wildlife and other natural resources, and record how these lost resources adversely affected the public.

If you can’t see spilled oil, how do you find it and clean it up?

That’s the situation emergency responders faced in two oil spills on the Mississippi River that challenged their understanding of how to approach evaluating oil spill conditions.

A life at sea, or a career conserving natural resources?

That was the choice I was contemplating while walking along the docks in Port Angeles, Washington, back in 1998. A chance encounter that day with the chief quartermaster of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ship Rainer showed me I could do both.