Grants / Department of the Interior / Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

M24AS00332: PC-24-03: Characterization of Water Column Habitats to Understand Potential Impacts from Deepwater Energy and Mineral Development

Closed Closed May 29, 2024 Opportunity M24AS00332 ☆ Save

This grant is closed. Who won this program's grants before is below, and similar open grants are at the end of the page. It is in our archive of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management notices from 2024.

• Award ceiling$820,000
• Award floor$520,000
• Total funding$820,000
• Cost sharingNot required
• Funding typeCooperative Agreement

Key dates

Who can apply

This opportunity was open to the applicants described in the notice.

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

This study is a single source Cooperative Agreement between BOEM and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks as part of the Alaska Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. This Program Announcement describes the specific projects that may be awarded to the universities or eligible groups identified. All awards are premised on receipt of an acceptable proposal. This is not an open solicitation for proposals. This announcement is specifically to announce intent to undertake the following project(s):• Characterization of water column habitats to understand potential impacts from deepwater energy and mineral developmentOpen to:• University of Alaska-Fairbanks as a member of the Alaska Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU).The award will be a cooperative agreement (see Eligibility Information below). This involves substantial involvement by BOEM scientists in various aspects of study development and/or study conduct. Given that it is associated with the Alaska CESU, the overhead rate will be 17.5%.

Is this a realistic fit?

• Past Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Environmental Studies (ES) awards averaged $612,245; this notice allows up to $820,000 per award.
• Most of the program's money (83% over five years) went to colleges and universities.
• No cost sharing or match is required.

What the grant funds

Although the pelagic ocean is the largest ecosystem on earth, it remains poorly characterized and understood due to its vast size and three-dimensional, highly dynamic nature (e.g., Perelman et al. 2021). Most oceanographic programs concentrate upon the surface ocean because plankton and larval fish are concentrated there. Very little of the water column below the epipelagic (0–200 m) has been described in any detail (Netburn 2018). However, we know that important processes occur throughout that water column, such as the biological pump (Passow and Carlson 2012), diel vertical migration (Sutton 2013, Kelly et al. 2019), other mechanisms for connectivity (Sutton 2013), and food web dynamics (Choy et al. 2017). As industries move to deeper waters of the OCS, it is imperative to learn more about potential impacts to these habitats, specifically sites of commercial interest. Water column information can be collected by traditional oceanographic equipment, especially when supplemented by new techniques and technology. In addition to physical and chemical profiles of the water column, Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) rosette casts can collect water samples to evaluate the biological community through eDNA sampling. Cameras can also be integrated onto CTD rosettes to help image these pelagic environments for which the deeper habitats are rarely visualized. This study is intended to fund the integration of a complementary water column component into planned marine mineral and offshore wind-related research cruises in locations of potential commercial interest. There are two cost-effective near-term opportunities for at-sea data collection to support the proposed study objectives in the fall of 2024. One is a planned August 26 – September 16 NOAA-led benthic habitats AUV survey on NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada out of Newport, Oregon that is focused on areas of interest for offshore wind in northern California and southern Oregon. The second is a September 10 – October 07 USGS-led multibeam and box core cruise on the R/V Kilo Moana out of Honolulu, Hawai’i that will assess the abundance and composition of abyssal manganese nodules at the southern extreme of the OCS south of Hawai’i. There appear to be several substantive outyear opportunities in 2025 and beyond to add a mid-water component to anticipated NOAA cruises in areas of interest for both offshore wind and critical minerals.

Category: Environment.

Applying now

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