NOAA and Gloucester Fish Exchange, Inc. (owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction) agreed late yesterday to settle three pending enforcement cases that involved allegations of handling illegally caught fish and maintaining false records.

NOAA announced today an additional $10 million to preserve fishing opportunities for the New England fishing industry and continue the development of a new sector program in the groundfish fishery. Over the last two years, a total of $47.2 million has been committed to the groundfish fishery and the transition to sectors.

Today, scientists from the NOAA-funded Gulf of Maine Toxicity project issued an outlook for a significant regional bloom of a toxic alga that causes ‘red tides’ in the spring and summer of this year, potentially threatening the New England shellfish industry.

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities.

I was deeply saddened to learn of Sam Hamilton’s untimely death this weekend. Sam was a wonderful colleague for whom we at NOAA had deep admiration. The NOAA family shares in this great loss to the conservation community, and we extend our sincere condolences to Sam’s family and to all of our colleagues at the Department of the Interior.

A new NOAA data feed will streamline search and rescue efforts and hazardous material cleanups in the Caribbean. Measurements of surface current speed and direction off the west coast of Puerto Rico are now feeding into a single Web site, making the information easily accessible and understandable to a broad user community of ocean rescuers and responders for the first time.

We’re pleased that the court views the Adaptive Management Implementation Plan as a positive development. We’re ready to proceed with the voluntary three-month remand as the court outlined in its proposed order so the court may consider the AMIP in evaluating the 2008 Biological Opinion.

NOAA and NASA officials announced a new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), launched tonight, successfully reached its initial orbit, joining four other GOES spacecraft that help NOAA forecasters track life-threatening weather and solar activity.

Scientists Discover Clues into Human Diseases by Studying Dolphins in a Changing Ocean

NOAA’s Fisheries Service today announced the agency will evaluate the status of 82 species of stony coral that the Center for Biological Diversity has asked to be listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.