Contacts: 

• Katherine Bunting Howarth, NY Sea Grant Associate Director and Interim Director, E: keb264@cornell.edu,  P: 607-255-2832

New York, NY, March 4, 2019 - For nearly 50 years, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has worked with coastal residents, communities, businesses and teachers, among others, on problems, opportunities and specific activities within the land and water interface. Together we promote cost-effective and common sense solutions to concerns New Yorkers face along the State’s marine, Great Lakes and Hudson River coasts.

Thousands of New Yorkers have benefited from Sea Grant programming in such areas as fisheries, aquatic invasive species, coastal tourism and coastal community resilience.

In this issue of New York Coastlines, we highlight some of the program’s most recently-funded coastal research.

Also, we examine nearly two dozen impacts that our program's specialists made this past year to use science in order to improve decisions made by local communities, businesses and individuals as they develop resilience action and promote sustainable resolutions to pressing coastal issues.

See NYSG's recent successes in Research, Extension and Education for more.



“As a colleague, I admire the work done by our researchers, staff and extension professionals,” says NYSG Interim Director Kathy Bunting-Howarth. “But nothing is as powerful and inspiring as the personal stories of stakeholders on the impact that New York Sea Grant has on their careers, businesses, education and lives."

If after perusing our most recent wave of accomplishments you're thinking "What Can I Do To Support New York Sea Grant?" we offer a suggestion: One quick and easy way is to contact your local Congressperson and Senator and convey your support of Sea Grant. To find your Congressional representatives, visit www.govtrack.us/congress/members. We encourage that if you do reach out to your elected officials in support of Sea Grant that you do so by March 15th.

In 2017, the Sea Grant program has ...

• Helped generate an estimated $579million in economic impacts
  
  

• Created or supported over 12,500 jobs
  
  

• Provided 33 state-level programs with funding that assisted 462 communities communities improve their resilience
  
  

• Assisted nearly 17,700 fishers adopt safe and sustainable fishing practice
  
  

• Aided in the restoration of an estimated 700,000 acres of coastal ecosystems
  
  

• Worked with about 1,300 industry, local, state and regional partners
  
  

• Supported the education and training of over 1,800 undergraduate and graduate students

The Sea Grant program achieved this with a Congressional appropriation in FY2017 of $72.5 million, which were leveraged with matching funds.

Sea Grant is a unique program within NOAA that sends 95% of its appropriated funds to coastal states through a competitive process to address issues that are identified as critical by public and private sector constituents and coastal communities throughout the United States. Sea Grant fosters cost-effective partnerships among state universities, state and local governments, NOAA, and coastal communities and businesses, leveraging nearly $3 for every $1 appropriated by Congress.

For more "Sea Grant by the numbers," see "The State of Sea Grant," a 2018 biennial report to Congress.


Credit: Kaitlyn O’Toole.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 33 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly. Our program also produces an occasional e-newsletter,"NOAA Sea Grant's Social Media Review," via its blog, www.nyseagrant.org/blog.