NOAA, the U.S. Navy and Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors (TMC), LLC., held a keel-laying ceremony today in Houma, Louisiana, for Discoverer, a new oceanographic research vessel being built for NOAA. The keel-laying ceremony marks the beginning of a ship’s construction. Second Gentleman Douglas C. Emhoff was named the ship’s sponsor.

NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson, a seafloor mapping and charting ship, completed a series of surveys in the Great Lakes in 2022. In all, the ship surveyed 450 square nautical miles of lake bottom in Lake Erie and 274 square nautical miles in Lake Ontario.

Civilian professional mariners play a critical role in the operation of NOAA's fleet of research and survey ships. Check out this profile contributed by NOAA Fisheries of Josh Cooper, a member of NOAA Ship Oregon II’s deck team. 

NOAA divers conducted numerous coral and seafloor habitat studies in the Mariana Islands as part of the Rainier Integrates Charting, Hydrography, And Reef Demographics, or RICHARD, mission supported by NOAA Ship Rainier in 2022. Learn more about the mission in this story map.

For this "meet the crew" profile, we asked Andrea Stoneman, who serves as Senior Survey Technician aboard NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson, to tell us about her role aboard the ship and what her path to NOAA was.

If you had asked me when I was a kid where I would be today, I certainly would not have imagined myself exploring the high seas in Alaska.

Federal, state and local officials joined NOAA on Aug. 31, 2021, at a groundbreaking ceremony marking the start of a project to revitalize the agency’s port facility in Ketchikan, Alaska. NOAA awarded an $18.7 million contract in April 2021 to Alaska-based Ahtna Infrastructure & Technologies, LLC to make major improvements to the facility. The project includes the construction of a new office building, floating pier and access bridge, and updated power and water utility systems for servicing visiting ships.

In January 2021, U.S. Coast Guard officer Lt. j.g. Rebecca Edmonds, found herself in an unusual situation for a Coast Guard member: serving as an officer of the deck aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship. In the 72nd year of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI), the San Diego-based NOAA Ship Reuben Lasker, one of NOAA’s five fisheries survey vessels, was short-handed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this article, we hear from Sophia Tigges, a survey technician aboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. As a survey technician she is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring the functionality and operational efficiency of all scientific data collection equipment aboard the ship. In her own words, she shares her journey from a young, budding science enthusiast to joining The Nation’s leading federal scientific agency. Enjoy!

NOAA’s effort to recapitalize its aging fleet of research ships took a major step forward today with the U.S. Navy’s award of a $178,082,877 contract to Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors LLC, Houma, Louisiana, for the detailed design and construction of two new oceanographic ships for the agency. NOAA is acquiring the vessels through an agreement with the Naval Sea Systems Command, a leader in building, providing and procuring large research ships for the nation's research fleet. The first ship, to be named Oceanographer, will be homeported in Honolulu.

NOAA is in the process of acquiring two new oceanographic ships as part of the agency’s fleet rebuilding effort. Once in service, the new ships will support a wide variety of missions, ranging from general oceanographic research and exploration to marine life, climate and ocean ecosystem studies. The first ship, to be named Oceanographer, will be homeported in Honolulu. The second ship, to be named Discoverer, will be assigned a homeport at a future date.