NOAA today announced a $131.9 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contract to Walsh Construction Company of Chicago to construct the main facility at NOAA’s new Pacific Regional Center on Ford Island in Honolulu.

A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potential significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.

NOAA and SeaWeb have entered into a partnership to enhance understanding of the nation's valuable, but increasingly vulnerable coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Sometimes referred to as the 'rainforests of the sea's; coral reefs provide services estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion globally each year.

Federal officials today commissioned NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada, a state-of-the-art research vessel that will study a wide range of marine life and ocean conditions along the West Coast.

On Friday NOAA reopened 3,114 square miles of Gulf waters offshore of the western Florida panhandle to commercial and recreational fishing. The reopening was announced after consultation with FDA and under a re-opening protocol agreed to by NOAA, the FDA, and the Gulf states.

A rare and exciting look at the seafloor with images of unusual and beautiful creatures was offered to U.S. and Indonesian scientists working side-by-side at Exploration Command Centers in Jakarta and Seattle this summer. They used cutting-edge technology to fill their screens with live views of seafloor geology and of deep-ocean marine animals in waters off Indonesia.

NOAA's Fisheries Service has issued regulations and a letter of authorization to the U.S. Navy that require protective measures to minimize impacts to marine mammals while conducting training exercises around the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific.

NOAA today reopened to commercial and recreational fishing 5,130 square miles of Gulf waters stretching from the far eastern coast of Louisiana, through Mississippi, Alabama, and the western Florida panhandle.