November 21, 2005
Budget Cuts to NOAA's Undersea Research Program
Just got this call to action from American Academy of Underwater Scientists:
The 2006 Department of Commerce budget recently passed by Congress dramatically reduces the funding for many of America's leading programs to promote public-private partnerships in ocean research and stewardship. For example, the budget would eliminate regional and national elements of the NOAA Undersea Research Program (NURP), including: the North Atlantic and Great Lakes Region at the University of Connecticut, the Mid-Atlantic Bight at Rutgers University, the Southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and the Caribbean Region at the Perry Institute for Marine Science. Additionally, funding to the West Coast & Polar Regions at the University of Alaska is cut by 55 percent. Furthermore, no funding is provided for NURP headquarters and its contribution to the Alvin deep submersible, nor for NURP’s undersea technologies that include the Aquarius undersea lab, LEO-15 seafloor observatory, remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles, and technical diving programs. Decades of carefully nurtured research and education capacity advanced by this national program are about to be erased by this decision. We need your help in asking NOAA to reprogram funds to sustain these lost programs.
This decision was not based on performance, relevance or science merit. The President’s FY 2006 budget included NURP at level funding (and includes the program again in its 2007 plan), and the 2006 Senate mark was above the Administration’s amount. NURP directly addresses recommendations made by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, and mandated by the President’s Ocean Action Plan, including:
+ NURP enables an ecosystem-based approach to managing coastal and ocean resources, providing critical data on, for example, commercially important fish and their habitats, coral reefs, deep water corals, biodiversity, methane hydrates, biotechnology, and coastal hazards.
+ NURP is a world leader in ocean technology development, for example, smarter, deeper vehicles (autonomous robots and occupied subs like Alvin), new tools and sensors for these vehicles, seafloor observatories such as LEO-15, and the world’s only underwater laboratory, Aquarius.
+ NURP supports education and outreach by providing “hands-on learning opportunities for teachers and students using underwater vehicles and data from seafloor observatories.”
Especially in the wake of devastating storms and natural disasters, declining natural resources, and the nation’s fastest growing coastal areas, it is not wise to reduce undersea research capabilities in the affected regions. No program in the country supports more scientific diving per year than these centers, as many dives per year as all the rest of NOAA combined. In addition to this significant loss in research productivity, over fifty NURP personnel with unique science and technology skills are at stake—an unrecoverable loss for NOAA.
Our request is simple; please address a letter (postal or email) to the NOAA Administrator, Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher (NOAA Office of the Administrator, Herbert C. Hoover Building, 14th & Constitution Ave. NW, Washington DC 20230; email: conrad.c.lautenbacher@noaa.gov) asking him to restore the NURP budget so that it can continue to serve the nation and support the East Coast centers, Alvin, LEO-15, and Aquarius, as well as the West Coast and Hawaiian Regions. Provide your own personal reasons for keeping NURP whole.
We thank you and hope to be serving your undersea research needs in 2006.
Sincerely,
NURP Council of Center Directors
Posted by Dida at November 21, 2005 3:14 PM
