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Contract for 2 NOAA research ships awarded to Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors, LLC

NOAA will add two new ships to its fleet of groundbreaking research vessels. The agency selected Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors, LLC. for a $624.6 million contract to initially design and build two cutting-edge research vessels, with an option to purchase two more. The first two ships will be built in Houma, Louisiana, with an expected delivery date of 2027 and 2028.

NOAA Ship Fairweather

Keel-laying ceremony held for new oceanographic research ship Discoverer

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.
A welder working on a metal plate while a group of people look on

NOAA divers survey reefs and habitats in the Mariana Islands

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.

Two divers working on the sea floor

Meet the Crew: Senior Survey Technician Andrea Stoneman

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.

A female senior survey technician on aboard a ship with a water sampling instrument