Ocean and Coastal Highlights

The brown pelican was reintroduced to Queen Bess Island beginning in 1968. To support these nesting birds with the habitat they need, biologists are focused on saving Queen Bess Island from erosion that has reduced it to a small fraction of its former size.

Interior provided $1.3 million in FY 2018 grant funding to the U.S. territories and the freely associated states to help protect coral reefs and marine resources. Funds support rehabilitation of corals, outreach, restoration, and removal of invasive species and pests.

USGS led the MATRIX cruise to delineate the distribution of gas hydrates along the U.S. Atlantic margin along with partners at BOEM and Department of Energy.

Together, BOEM, USGS, and NOAA explored and mapped deep-sea coral, canyon, and gas seep ecosystems and examined fish distribution and relation to localized features. The team collected water, sediment, benthic faunal samples, and imagery of benthic habitats to increase knowledge of the U.S. continental margin geology, the types of communities found on the seafloor, and the mid-water communities that interact with those seafloor communities in unexplored areas offshore from Florida to North Carolina.

The Great Lakes Integrated Cladophora Assessment Project is a Great Lakes-wide, bi-nationally coordinated, multijurisdictional effort meeting the challenge of managing nuisance Cladophora algae.

Known as conservation canines, these dogs are trained and motivated to accurately locate scent and samples to help provide expert biologists with a multitude of information—without having to trap and take samples from wildlife.

Dam construction has prevented American eel the access needed to upstream habitats to maintain their threatened populations. Scientists are studying where best to install fish passages, so that journeying eel can reach parts of the river that have been inaccessible for over 180 years.

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