Government Agencies: The Quiet Professionals

With a national election underway, it’s easy to get lost in the endless political headlines. So, let’s dig down a few levels and look at the different federal departments and agencies quietly working to make boating and outdoor recreation safer and better for the American public, regardless of what unfolds in Washington. The people who work at these government agencies are federal employees, yes, but most of their jobs are not subject to the proclivities of different presidential administrations, and that’s for good reason: They must remain independent experts who require objectivity and longevity in their jobs and projects in order to be effective for us. Let’s take a look at what they accomplish for our hobby, sport, and industry.

Forecasting at your fingertips

It’s a bluebird late summer day and you’re ready to hit the water. You decide to check the weather first. Smart, because there are thunderstorms forecast in the afternoon and a Small Craft Advisory going into effect midday. Whether you received that information through a private weather forecasting app or website, odds are your weather hub of choice pulled its data wholly or in part from the National Weather Service (NWS), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

For the price of only $3 per American per year, NWS collects 6.3 billion weather observations each day and issues 1.5 million forecasts and 50,000 weather warnings and advisories each year – accurate forecasts provided free to the public for our safety. When the situation really turns sour, the National Hurricane Center (NHC), also a branch of NWS, is ready to track boaters’ least favorite cyclones.

In the early days of NHC, warnings of tropical weather systems often came with little advance notice. News of a major 1926 hurricane spread through the streets of Miami at midnight via door-to-door relay, only hours before landfall. A century of research, government investment, and technological advancement has enabled the modern-day NHC to track hurricanes while still in their infancy and to predict their track and development up to five days out, a 60-fold increase in warning time.

Common good charting

Next time you pull away from your marina and enter a winding inlet, note how NOAA again plays a role in guiding you through this tricky channel. Although the sunsetting of NOAA paper charts will be completed in January 2025 NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey still maintains the nation’s digital charts, which cover 95,000 miles of shoreline and 3.4 million square nautical miles of water.

In-depth knowledge of the nation’s coasts was considered so important for national security and commerce that the Coast Survey was “the nation’s first scientific agency,” instated by President Thomas Jefferson as early as 1807. The office’s history is wide-ranging, including a brief stint as the country’s keeper of standard weights and measures and assignments to some of the nation’s first formal studies of coral reefs. It invented the first machine to predict tides in the U.S., as well as radio acoustic ranging, the first marine navigation system that did not rely on visuals for geographic positioning.

Today, Coast Survey’s primary mandate is to collect depth data and to create and distribute nautical charts for military, commercial, and recreational use. It also publishes the 10 Coast Pilots, which are updated every year to serve as a companion to the charts, as well as U.S. Chart No. 1, which explains every symbol, abbreviation, and term found on the official charts. Both are available to download free of charge (nauticalcharts.noaa.gov) and are jam-packed with information about every mile of coastline, including restricted areas, bridge operations, meteorological data, and storm havens.

When those charts change faster than they can be formally updated, the U.S. Coast Guard steps in, offering its free Local Notices to Mariners, Broadcast Notices to Mariners, and other frequent updates regarding changes to navigational marks, shoaling, bridge and infrastructure work, new wrecks, and more – all critical information for mariners. Visit navcen.uscg.gov to explore its resources.

Dredging, and then some

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) also has an important role in your safe passage out of that inlet. A mixed military and civilian institution established in 1775, USACE manages dredging – identifying areas that need it, drafting the plans for how to go about it, then coordinating with private companies to make it happen. Today, more than 400 ports and 25,000 miles of channels are dredged each year to ensure proper depth maintenance. But USACE does much more than just dredging. Here are just a few examples.

For the past decade, it has been working with the state of Maryland to use dredge material to rebuild eroding islands in the Chesapeake Bay. Not only does this work help preserve the islands, but it also creates nurseries and havens for wildlife from migratory birds to fish and helps protect the mainland from the eroding forces of increasing wave action and storms.

In Oregon, USACE is rebuilding jetties to ensure continued access and reduced wave action in Coos Bay. In the Great Lakes, it’s researching how living shorelines can help reduce coastal flooding. Upon inland lakes around the country, it’s using remote sensing technologies to identify the early stages of harmful algae blooms. And in Baltimore, USACE is a key part of the joint task force responding to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge earlier this year.

Ground control to Captain Tom

As you exit that inlet and open up the throttle, NASA’s expertise comes into play. Although best known for space research conducted far beyond our atmosphere, NASA studies our own planet more than any other. PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) is an American satellite launched this year specifically designed to help NASA scientists collect data about weather and cloud formation, pollution, and microscopic ocean life, all topics with important implications for boaters.

Speaking of satellites, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is behind the impressive reliability of the Global Positioning System (GPS) that your chartplotter relies on to help you navigate from A to B. DOD maintains at least 24 operational GPS satellites at all times, ensuring continuous coverage for drivers, boaters, and everyone in between.

Policing the waters

As you putter along, do you spot what looks like a charter? The U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for ensuring that they’re operating safely. The Coast Guard may be best known for headline-grabbing search-and-rescue (SAR) operations, but its purview is wider than that. In addition to regulating boating safety, enforcing port security, and maintaining Aids to Navigation, the Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center is responsible for licensing and setting the rules and requirements for commercial captains and other paid positions on the water. They’re always on the lookout for illegal charters to ensure – for our safety – that every licensed commercial captain on our waterways has undergone rigorous training and certification.

If things should go very wrong aboard, and emergency rescue is needed, we call the U.S. Coast Guard. While heroic helicopter pilots and rescue swimmers dominate the headlines, SAR is a complex operation requiring an armada of extraordinarily experienced oceanographers, analysts, and communications professionals who must quickly triangulate intricate data on currents, wind, waves, weights, and water temperatures in order to create accurate search grids. When the crisis occurs, time and this level of experience is of the essence.

Strong stocks, successful anglers

It’s time to drop a hook and see about catching some dinner. In the wake of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) critical clean-water initiatives and the regulations it now enforces, water pollution in the U.S. has declined significantly over the past 50 years, preserving and restoring aquatic habitats for fish and anglers alike.

In 1967, not a single fish could be found in the Cuyahoga River between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, due to decades of unabated industrial pollution. Following EPA efforts, today there are more than 70 species there, and in 2019 they were declared safe to eat. Prior to 1970, anyone who fell into the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., required a tetanus shot. Since then, the addition of an EPA-backed state-of-the-art wastewater treatment center has drastically improved water quality, and species like largemouth bass have returned to the river. In the Des Plaines River of Illinois, 97% of the catch in the early 1960s was carp and goldfish, both invasive species. In partnership with the EPA, wastewater improvements by the city of Chicago have made it so that, today, native sportfish account for 69% of the total catch in the Des Plaines.

With nutrient runoff (caused by wastewater treatment facilities, fertilizers, and farming) being a continuing problem, especially in enclosed waters, EPA continues its critical work getting our waters cleaner and better for people, and sustaining healthy fish and wildlife.

While EPA focuses on water quality – which benefits swimmers, paddlers, towsports enthusiasts, and all boaters alike, including anglers – other agencies focus more specifically on the wildlife itself. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), under the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages hatcheries, stocks inland lakes and rivers, fights invasives, and monitors the health of stocks around the country. USFWS also administers the Boating Infrastructure Grant (BIG) program, which helps states and private companies fund critical improvements to recreational boating access, from expanded transient dockage to harbor dredging to better marina amenities. Offshore, NOAA’s Fisheries office takes over from USFWS, restoring and maintaining sustainable commercial and recreational fisheries in federal waters, so you can have your catch and eat it, too.

Boaters love our freedom

What we boaters love about our lifestyle has a lot to do with the independence, self-sufficiency, and intimate connection to the natural world. Behind the scenes, though, that takes specialists on the federal and state level working hard to produce free weather data, clean and clear waters, professional rescue capabilities, accurate charting of our coasts, regular maintenance of our maritime and coastal infrastructure, protection of our fish and wildlife, and enforcement of our maritime laws. All those critically important government professionals help create the boating environment we love and the feeling of freedom we get to enjoy on the water.