The Biden administration will spend an additional $147.5 million to modernize NOAA’s scientific programs aimed at fostering “climate-ready fisheries,” the agency announced Wednesday.
The Inflation Reduction Act funding, delivered in the final weeks of the Biden presidency, comes on top of $1.2 billion NOAA Fisheries received in June 2023 to advance the agency’s knowledge of how climate change is affecting marine life, including commercial and recreational fish stocks and endangered marine mammals like whales.
NOAA Fisheries will use $107.5 million to enhance science and data collection to account for the effects of climate change and improve fish and marine mammal stock assessments, while $40 million will go to the agency’s Climate, Ecosystems and Fisheries Initiative, which seeks to create a “nationwide decision support system” to help fishermen, fisheries managers, coastal communities and ocean-based industries to reduce climate impacts and improve resilience to changing ocean conditions.
An additional $40 million will be shared among NOAA Fisheries, the National Ocean Service and NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research to improve forecasting tools and long-term projections of changing ocean conditions and promote “climate-informed” resource management and risk assessment, the agency said in a press release.
