NOAA Awards More Than $2.4 Million to the Research Foundation of SUNY

NY Sea Grant to conduct research on coastal flooding and sea level rise, investigate botulism in Great Lakes

Contacts:

Barbara A Branca, Communications Manager, NYSG
Phone: 631.632.6956
E-mail: Barbara.Branca@stonybrook.edu

Paul C Focazio, Writer and Web Developer, NYSG
Phone: 631.632.6910
E-mail: Paul.Focazio@stonybrook.edu

STONY BROOK, NY, March 03, 2004 - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded more than $2.4 million to the Research Foundation of State University of New York to support programs and research conducted by New York Sea Grant, a cooperative effort of the State University of New York and Cornell University. NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The award funds New York Sea Grant's 11 new research projects and numerous education and communications projects, as well as an extension program that serves the state's coastal communities from New York's two Great Lakes to the Hudson Valley, the greater New York metropolitan area and Long Island. Administrative offices are located at Stony Brook University. Sea Grant is a partnership between the nation's universities and NOAA that began in 1966. Sea Grant programs are located in coastal and Great Lakes states and focus on marine and coastal research.

"This NOAA grant, on behalf of New York Sea Grant, provides funding necessary to support and enhance multi-project initiatives targeting the origin of botulism in Lake Erie fish and the potential impacts of coastal change on New York's communities and beaches," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "NOAA and the Bush Administration are committed to working with the academic community to improve our understanding of the environment." Adds NYSG Director Jack Mattice, "Sea Grant is the mechanism through which NOAA accesses US academic institutions to support sustainable use of coastal resources."

Other newly-funded New York Sea Grant research projects focus on the sustainable use of economically important Great Lakes fisheries. Two projects will trace the origin of type E botulism in Lake Erie fish. Other projects investigate mortality in Lake Ontario sportfish, provide critically important data about salmonid production useful to fisheries managers, and examine changes in Lake Ontario's food web.

New York Sea Grant researchers in the marine district will use state-of-the-art modeling and forecasting techniques to examine how coastal processes affect metropolitan New York and Long Island with projects on coastal flooding, sea level rise response, and the impacts of barrier island breaches to Long Island's estuaries. Several other projects will examine how ecological and geological changes in Long Island's south shore estuaries affect shellfish and examine aspects of a critically important parasitic disease in hard clams. These research efforts have been designed to provide valuable and needed information for decision makers to address pressing issues in New York and elsewhere.

Each year, NOAA awards approximately $900 million in grants to members of the academic, scientific and business communities to assist the agency in fulfilling its mission to study the Earth's natural systems in order to predict environmental change, manage ocean resources, protect life and property, and provide decision makers with reliable scientific information. NOAA goals and programs reflect a commitment to these basic responsibilities of science and service to the nation for the past 33 years.