Northeast Atlantic Region (NERACOOS)

News from the Region

News Northeast region

Summer 2012 Stories

 

Bats and Buoys: Monitoring Bat Activity in the Northeast

NERACOOS buoys in the Gulf of Maine are helping biologists detect bat activity over the ocean in the Northeast.  In April 2012, NERACOOS partners initiated a 3-year effort to better understand general bat and migration activity over ocean waters. Data gathered during the multi-year survey effort will ultimately help determine and overcome potential risks associated with offshore wind turbines.

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Spring 2012 Stories:

Hi-tech ocean robot starts mission in the Gulf of Maine

A hi-tech ocean robot, the Wave Glider, was launched off the coast of Maine in May, 2012 on the first leg of an extensive ocean observing demonstration project.

On May 3rd, off the coast of Maine, a team from Liquid Robotics, Sonardyne and the University of Maine launched a Wave Glider and deployed two Fetch nodes as part of the first leg of an extensive ocean observing technology demonstration project. This project is a U.S. IOOS facilitated collaboration among industry, government, academic and non-profit organizations. The goal of the project is to test two new high technology ocean observing tools in the New England and Mid-Atlantic coastal waters. Read more...

VEMCO fish sensor attached to wave glider for this demonstration	NERACOOS, Univ of Maine, ODAS Weather Buoy located in the demonstration operating area	Sonardyne fetch node awaiting deployment in association with the wave glider demonstration

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Improving regional water quality monitoring

Poor water quality is a costly issue in many New England bays and estuaries. Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay, and other highly urbanized coastal water bodies are prone to low dissolved oxygen during the summer months that can lead to fish kills and other problems.

A new system for forecasting coastal hazards

Nor'easters, hurricanes and other coastal storms that impact the Northeast can result in costly damage and cause hazardous conditions for coastal residents. NERACOOS is working to deliver improved and more detailed coastal forecasts to provide warning of coastal flooding, to facilitate evacuation and other emergency measures and to develop accurate information of coastal inundation.

Observing system update 

The teams that operate the NERACOOS system of ocean observing buoys are continually working to maintain and upgrade the buoys and their instruments so that the hourly information keeps flowing to all that rely on it.

Right Whales and Ocean Observing: An Exhibit that Connects People to Research

The Seacoast Science Center and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary are partnering with NERACOOS to create an interactive to uch screen display highlighting right whale research and ocean observing. The display will showcase the efforts being made to reduce threats to Right Whales in the Gulf of Maine through research, including the acoustic buoys of the Right Whale Listening Network.

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Northeastern IOOS Partners Explore New Opportunities to Collaborate with NOAA, EPA

On May 9, the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS), hosted the directors of all four northeast National Estuarine Research Reserve Systems (NERRS) and the EPA’s six regional National Estuary Programs (NEP) during a dedicated forum within the annual NERACOOS Board of Directors Meeting in Rye, Hew Hampshire. 

The forum had begun with overviews of regional NEP, NERRS, and NERACOOS activities and priorities and included time to discuss complementary activities and partnership ideas.

Further details:

NEP and NERRS Session Agenda (pdf)

New Products and New Look for NERACOOS Website

Check out the new website of the Northeastern Regional Association:

http://www.neracoos.org/

This website had been redesigned to help highlight NERACOOS activities and partners and provide easier access to the data and tools users are looking for.

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NERACOOS Receives $1.77M Award

The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) program recently awarded NERACOOS $1.77M in federal funding to help support all aspects of the organization including observations, modeling, program and data management, as well as education and outreach. The majority of the funds will go to our observing system partners to help maintain and operate the critical ocean observing system infrastructure that many rely on. This award is the first installment of funds from a 5-year award received by NERACOOS.

 

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About the Northeast Region (NERACOOS)

The Northeast region is geographically complex, with five states and two Canadian Provinces, coastal waters and watersheds of the Scotian Shelf, Gulf of Maine, Southern New England Bight, and Long Island Sound. Regional user requirements identified inundation, harmful algal blooms, water quality, and living marine resources as specific concerns in the Northeastern Region. The NERACOOS project, originally proposed in April 2007, had three goals: (1) operate a core of observing elements; (2) establish new observing capabilities for inundation, water quality, and harmful algal bloom, and; (3) develop the design for the user-driven core observing system. In response to budget limitations, the focus has been on continued operation of selected elements of the existing regional observing system, with a modest commitment to enhancement of observing capabilities. 

NERACOOS continues the improvement and integration of the coastal ocean observing system through close collaboration with regional organizations, especially the Northeast Regional Ocean Council (NROC). The NROC is a state-federal partnership that provides a forum for tackling and prioritizing regional scale problems. This collaboration will help ensure that NERACOOS directly addresses pressing regional scale issues of societal benefit. To that end, NERACOOS adopted four NROC priority theme areas and formalized the collaboration with a Memorandum of Understanding. The existing highly-leveraged observing, modeling, data integration, and product development infrastructure provides practical operational capacity in each priority area and NERACOOS activities seek to maintain the capacity previously developed.

The NROC and NERACOOS activities are as follows:

• Maritime Safety and Security – NERACOOS will provide real-time observations and forecasts directly for maritime operational safety, inform US and Canadian Coast Guard Search and Rescue Operations, and introduce new and enhance existing weather forecast products.
  
  
• Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem Health – NERACOOS will improve harmful algal bloom monitoring and forecasting, enhance monitoring and integration of water quality information, enable ecosystem based fisheries management and marine spatial planning, and monitor ocean acidification.
  
  
• Ocean Energy – NERACOOS will provide the necessary oceanographic information to facilitate the renewable energy sector and the Data Integration Framework required for a regional approach to facilities sighting.
  
  
• Coastal Hazards Resiliency – NERACOOS will enhance and evaluate street-level inundation forecasting, expand forecasts for coastal flooding and erosion, and support emergency spill response.

Additionally, climate change and Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning are central and cross-cutting themes.

Finally, continued development and implementation of a Data Management and Communication system is central to the delivery of information and products to users of the system, performance and evaluation metrics will enable tracking the return on investment, and education and outreach will engage NERACOOS users to ensure information and products meet their needs.

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Resources

Fact Sheet, 2012 (pdf)

One-Pager, 2011:
IOOS in Action: The Northeast (pdf)