NOAA Lifts 14 Metric Tons of Fishing Nets and Plastics from Hawaiian Coral Reefs

NOAA Fisheries Biologist Matthew Parry also contributed to this post.

Lost or discarded fishing nets frequently get lodged on corals and smother or break the corals underneath them. Here, a diver removes them from a reef near Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. (NOAA)

The sea life around Hawaii’s remote Midway Atoll is swimming easier after NOAA recently removed 14 metric tons of debris from its waters (A metric ton equals about 2,204 pounds.). The removal team, consisting of members of the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, spent 19 days collecting debris both from along the shoreline and in the water around Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. As usual, the bulk of the items recovered were abandoned fishing gear and plastics.

During the 2013 cruise, the NOAA team discovered and hauled away a 23-foot-long boat that was confirmed to have been washed away from Japan during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. (NOAA)

Notably, the team also removed a 23-foot-long derelict vessel weighing close to three-quarters of a metric ton. This vessel was confirmed as having been lost from Japan during the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami. (Learn more about marine debris from the tsunami.)

This current round of marine debris removal efforts began in 2011 when a plan was put in place to help restore the environment injured after the research ship M/V Casitas ran aground on the coral reefs of Pearl and Hermes Atoll in 2005. This atoll is located in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in what is now the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Our office, along with our partners, undertook a Natural Resource Damage Assessment for this ship grounding. This process resulted in a legal settlement which provided NOAA with funds to conduct marine debris removal projects over several summers, starting in 2011. The 2011 efforts removed 15 metric tons of marine debris while the 2012 cruise brought in 52 metric tons. Since 2011, NOAA has collected a total of 81 metric tons or 178,000 pounds of debris from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The 2013 NOAA team collected 14 metric tons of fishing gear, plastic, and other debris from the shoreline and waters around Midway Atoll. (NOAA)

Marine debris, particularly discarded and lost fishing gear, is a substantial source of coral damage in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Fishing nets frequently get lodged on corals and smother or break the corals underneath them. NOAA and our partners determined that removing nets from coral reefs in this area would prevent similar injuries to corals as those that occurred during the M/V Casitas grounding and subsequent response.

Learn more about efforts to restore coral reefs after this ship grounding [PDF].

A Trip to the Arctic, Where Shrinking Ice Is Creating Bigger Concerns

In Barrow, Alaska, stands a monument constructed of bowhead whale bones and dedicated to lost sailors. (NOAA).

It was my first trip to Barrow, Alaska, and I was excited at the possibility of seeing a polar bear for the first time outside of a zoo. Unfortunately I did not get a glimpse of a bear, but as I am telling my friends back in Seattle, perhaps a bear saw me.

In early November, I returned to the Arctic, this time to the northern hub of Barrow (get out your map of Alaska and go straight to the top). Although this was a new destination for me, I came to Barrow with the same intentions when first visiting the Arctic in the city of Kotzebue, Alaska, this spring: to discuss oil spill response and restoration issues with the residents of the North Slope Borough.

As a result of climate change, the Arctic environment is changing rapidly, and the retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean opens new doors for human activity in the region by creating new paths to places previously inaccessible. The all-but-certain increases in ship traffic and offshore oil and gas exploration are setting up a situation where the likelihood of oil spills increases drastically. It was under these circumstances that I found myself sitting in the locally famous Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican restaurant in Barrow on a night in November. I was chatting with my fellow NOAA colleagues and University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center staff about the workshop starting the next morning.

The goals of this two-day workshop revolved around community involvement in responding to oil spills and in assessing and restoring resulting damages to natural resources. The workshop also included discussions about how to integrate local community and traditional knowledge into our new Arctic planning and response tool, the Environmental Response Management Application (Arctic ERMA®). Most importantly, the workshop was an opportunity to enhance relationships between local communities and government agencies.

A sign in town points out the remoteness of Barrow, Alaska, from the rest of the world. (NOAA)

During the course of the meeting, community members from Barrow expressed their concerns about oil spill response capabilities and how a spill would affect their subsistence lifestyle.  As this was only the second time my feet had ever walked above the Arctic Circle, I was humbled to hear whaling captains and other residents speak about the remarkably unique natural resources of the Arctic.

During meeting breaks I spoke with several residents who commented on a video playing in the lobby of the meeting center. The video showed numerous local walrus and whale hunts. The residents pointed out features of the ice and how they always had to be prepared at a moment’s notice to deal with the changing ice conditions.

How can we restore environments injured by spilled oil in an amazing setting like this—vast, remote, and mostly undeveloped? While there are no easy answers, we must work together now so we are better prepared if an oil spill occurs and we need to restore the environment.

For NOAA and other government personnel to figure out how much an oil spill has hurt Arctic marine environments and then fix them, we will require the help of local residents who hold generations of knowledge about the landscape. Workshops like these can be an introduction to each other, but we really look forward to sustaining these relationships.

Want to hear more about the challenge of Arctic oil spill response and restoration from the perspectives of Arctic residents? Recently a workshop report from our spring meeting in Kotzebue [PDF] has been released. Staff from our office also just returned from Kotzebue where they attended a meeting about a great new project to map subsistence use of natural resources (e.g., hunting, fishing, etc.) in the Northwest Arctic Borough.

UPDATED 3/29/2013: The workshop report and presentations from the Barrow workshop are now available.

Healthy Habitat, Healthy Economy: Restoration Creates American Jobs

During high school and my first year of college, I landed a job working at a kayak tourism shop near Seattle, Wash. My job depended on having healthy beaches and parks we could take our customers to enjoy. Several of the areas we brought kayakers to were former industrial sites, which were now restored.

Heavy equipment removes dredge and landfill material from this site of marsh restoration in Lincoln Park, N.J. According to a recent study, NOAA has created 33 jobs for every $1 million spent to restore habitat through “labor intensive” projects.

We often had lunch on a restored beach that had been damaged by an old wood-treatment facility. I got to see close up how those same heavy machines that injured habitat could also be used to reverse environmental damage, creating jobs both now and in the future. That beach restoration project ensured a job for workers who wore hardhats, and it also helped ensure jobs for those of us who wore life jackets to work.

Re-creating coastal habitats that were lost due to human impact doesn’t just benefit wildlife. It also supports fisheries, tourism, and coastal resiliency for years down the road. A recent study by the nonprofit Ecotrust [PDF, 1.6 MB] found that from 2001-2010 $411.4 million invested in restoration work in Oregon generated as much as $977.5 million in economic output.

And labor-intensive restoration—like building oyster reefs in coastal Alabama—creates more than 30 jobs per million dollars invested. (That’s more than twice as many jobs as the oil and gas and road construction industries combined.) Want to see more studies like this from around the nation? We’ve got you covered.

Restoration projects create jobs for construction workers, landscapers, heavy equipment operators, and technical experts such as engineers and wildlife biologists. These same restoration projects also create demand for local businesses, such as plant nurseries and rock quarries.

The Office of Response and Restoration is just one piston of the NOAA engine for coastal restoration. Restoration projects being led by NOAA are occurring all across this county. Visit NOAA’s Restoration Atlas to locate one near you.

Watch this video to learn even more about how the restoration economy is helping to keep people in jobs:

Building Relationships out on the Ice in Kotzebue, Alaska

Overlook of Kotzebue, Alaska. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

I could read reports and attend meetings until I’m blue in the face, but until I made my first trip above the Arctic Circle to the village of Kotzebue, located on Alaska’s northwest coast, I couldn’t fully appreciate the challenges of dealing with an oil spill in Arctic conditions. Last week, however, I finally was able to see some of those challenges first hand.

The purpose of this trip up north was to attend a workshop on involving the community not only when responding to oil spills but also when measuring and restoring the resulting damage to natural resources. Due to the prospect of increased ship traffic and offshore oil drilling in Arctic regions, the risk of an oil spill in Arctic waters is growing.

As a result, Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough sponsored this workshop to discuss oil spill response and restoration issues. NOAA attended along with several other state and federal agencies, and the Coastal Response and Research Center facilitated the meeting. The workshop also included discussions about how to integrate local community knowledge into the newly released Arctic Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA), an online mapping tool that integrates different types of environmental information for decision makers during disasters.

A classic building on the Kotzebue waterfront. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

Located 33 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Kotzebue is a hub of travel for this area of Alaska, allowing participants from eleven villages in the Northwest Arctic Borough to attend this workshop. During the course of the meeting, community members from Kotzebue and surrounding villages expressed concerns about oil spill response capabilities and how a spill would affect their subsistence lifestyle.

These initial discussions are extremely useful in NOAA’s efforts to broaden our understanding of how people are so closely tied to and dependent on natural resources in the Arctic—and how we would be able to evaluate those connections in case an oil spill interfered with them. The most important goal of the workshop that we were able to achieve was to enhance relationships and the knowledge exchange between local Alaskan communities and government agencies.

I’m not sure of the best way to explain how important this is, but I’ll give it a shot. When we first arrived in Kotzebue, we spent a good amount of time looking out over the vast sea ice; it was the first time I had ever seen this thick layer of ice frozen over the Arctic Ocean. We saw snowmobilers and skiers speed across it, and we observed numerous small groups ice fishing on it. Two days later, the first layer of snow on the ice had firmed up, enabling us to walk out onto it without sinking up to our knees in snow.

The big question was, How safe was the ice? (Because this was my first trip to the Arctic and I only know Seattle’s mild winters, I was justifiably apprehensive about it.) We could see some cracks in the ice, but two days ago it was being heavily used. Even though there was no one out on the ice at the time, eventually we figured that it was safe.

I finally venture out onto the ice in Kotzebue. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

Very timidly, we walked out onto the sea ice, but no issues arose except cold fingers. What we needed and desired, however, was guidance from the locals who knew the ice. Those who live in this amazing corner of the world know the status of the ice and would have been able to direct us if there were any safety problems.

I think this experience, although on a very small scale, can be compared to the objectives of this workshop.  One of the central goals was to start building relationships between those who know the local environments with those emergency responders and restoration experts who will need their guidance and expertise if an oil spill does occur.

From Community Rescuers to Co-Workers: Reflections on World Oceans Day

Within my first couple of hours on the job at NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, I realized how much my life had already crossed paths with this organization. I grew up in Eagle Harbor, located in Puget Sound, Washington, and my house looked straight across at an old creosote plant that polluted my piece of the ocean.

A ferry pulls into Eagle Harbor, Wash., which was essentially my backyard growing up. Credit: Joe Inslee.

Little did I know then that I would someday work for the office that evaluated the marine environmental damage from activities conducted at this very plant. The office also restored beaches in the harbor that I still use when I return home.

After high school, I headed north to Bellingham, Wash., where the memory of a tragic pipeline explosion was fresh in the minds and hearts of the community. As a result of a pipeline leak, over 200,000 gallons of gasoline flowed into a creek that ran through downtown Bellingham. After igniting, the explosion severely damaged the creek’s ecosystem and tragically killed three community members.

Very early in my new job at NOAA, I was amazed to learn how closely my office was involved in dealing with that incident. My co-workers acted quickly to provide scientific support to response agencies and are still involved in returning the creek environment to its pre-spill state through such actions as restoring salmon habitat and improving public access to the creek.

Why do these experiences and realizations carry such significance to me as I sit in my cube in D.C. years later? Quite simply, they are my ultimate motivators.  I know first-hand how the multiple communities I have lived in have benefited from my co-workers’ efforts. I completely understand how environmental restoration projects can help a community recover from environmental damage.

It can be easy for us who sit in cubicle-land to slowly become removed from the natural resources we are charged to protect and restore. Fortunately, my personal connections with this office help me maintain this connection today and every other day.