In 2022, NOAA divers with the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science's (NCCOS) Mussel Watch Program supported a seven-week sampling mission to determine the amount of contamination in the Great Lakes and its potential to damage ecosystem health. Learn more about the project in this NCCOS story.

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.

On November 18, 2019, a team that included NOAA scientific divers released endangered white abalone into the wild off southern California, a key recovery strategy for the native species. The release was a major step towards bringing white abalone back from the brink of extinction. Learn more about the project in this NOAA Fisheries story.