Business as usual
Community involvement will likely become increasingly important for NOAA because its impact on small, isolated Newport and Lincoln County promises to be immense during the next 18 years or longer. At this point, however, Capt. Blake and other NOAA Corps officers remain focused on their mission, which is to have “our ships continue doing what they are designed to do.” That involves about 110 crew members and about 55 office and warehouse employees at the base to support the vessels’ sea-going missions. The ships include: -Bell M. Shimada and Oscar Dyson, both fishery survey vessels that primarily work the waters of the West Coast, including off Alaska’s Aleutian and Kodiak islands. They survey for the density of population of a variety of fish, including sardines and hake off the mainland and pollock, salmon and cod in Alaska waters. NOAA also does a killer whale survey along the coast during the summer months, “which is important because they have a significant impact to the salmon population,” Black said. The results of all the surveys assist the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in keeping its management programs up to date. -The Rainier and Fairweather do hydrographic surveys mostly in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, updating and creating new nautical charts of the ocean’s floor. Blake said many charts are too old to
be useful, and other areas have no mapping at all. Overall, eight vessels are under Blake’s command, down one recently with the decommissioning of the Miller Freeman, which will be replaced by a new vessel called the Rueben Lasker. There are three ships stationed in Hawaii and a fourth, the McArthur II, is currently undergoing maintenance in a Seattle shipyard. While there is more to grow since NOAA moved from Seattle to Newport, federal funding for its missions has decreased during the last year as the government has been forced to “sequester” its spending in a variety of ways. “Nothing has really changed as far as our missions are concerned,” said Blake, “but we have had to adjust what we do with our funding. The cost of diesel fuel, for example, has doubled from $2 to $4 in the last few years. Our operating costs have gone up, so we’ve had to cut back on our days at sea.” While there has been an operating reduction, he said, there has been no cutting back on personnel because the vessels need to be maintained and Photo by Dennis Anstine properly manned when they do their missions. The NOAA Corps consists of only commissioned officers, but its “civilian masters” and wage marine employees work for hourly wages and are represented by unions.The fleet, Blake said, consists of five different personnel systems between ship and shore, “so it can get confusing.”
NOAA’s silver lining
The promise of jobs and contracts with local vendors was an important part of the attraction for
Newport-NOAA Timeline
2007
August 2009
of Newport submits a bid for the relocation of NOAA’s Marine Operations Center-Pacific headquarters from Lake Union in Seattle.
The bid was awarded to the Port of Newport.
Port