NOAA FISHERIES

Captain Phil Ruhle with the F/V Sea Breeze in N. Kingston, R.I., was the only commercial fisherman that cooperated with NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center scientists and crew of the NOAA R/V Albatross IV to conduct paired trawl surveys to calibrate the differences in catch rates for different configurations of the Yankee 36 trawl gear used by the Center. The Center used the trawls to conduct resource surveys/stock assessments in use since February of 2000. Captain Ruhle's boat, the F/V Sea Breeze, was used to monitor changes in abundance during the comparison tows.

William A. McLellan from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, N.C., has been a key player in the national effort to respond to and understand the causes of marine mammal strandings. He has been responding to strandings for more than 18 years and is currently large whale necropsy team lead for the Mid-Atlantic and the North Carolina state stranding coordinator. He has volunteered numerous hours and driven thousands of miles in his effort to assist the stranding network and NOAA scientists in understanding the causes of strandings including human induced mortalities, basic biology and the causes of die-offs.

Thomas F. Kazo, director of the Wildlife Research Team, Inc. in Sunrise, Fla., has employed a unique vision and approach for restoring one of the last mangrove systems in urban Miami-Dade county. Using only canoes and sheer man-power and inspiration, volunteers have already spent thousands of hours reopening intertidal corridors throughout a severely degraded 600-plus acre mangrove preserve that was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Kazo's unique approach is not only successful, but empowering. In 2001, the Wildlife Research Team was awarded a FishAmerica grant through the NOAA Restoration Center's Community-based Program to spark their efforts. What was once Kazo's unique vision has now resulted in an improvement of water quality and clarity, increased tidal flushing, enhanced vegetation, an increase in the presence of fish and even the visit of a 6-1/2' saltwater crocodile.

Milton C. Shedd (posthumous award) formerly with American Fishing Tackle Company in Irvine, Calif., dedicated 70 years of his life to the marine environment through world-wide research programs, recreational fishing conservation and developing public service responsibility in marine animal display. He was instrumental in developing some of the earliest research tagging programs for tuna and marlin species on the West Coast; initiated research ties between marine scientists and Sea World; worked with the National Science Foundation to develop scientific data on the Antarctic; and worked with Hubbs/Sea World to develop acoustic data to assess marine fish and mammal populations. Milton C. Shedd passed away from cancer on May 24, 2002.

Jackie Ciano, Michael Newcomer, Emily Argo and Tom Hinds (posthumous award) , formerly with Wildlife Trust and Environmental Aviation Services in Sarasota and Fernandino Beach, Fla. These individuals have spent numerous hours partnering with NOAA scientists to better understand marine mammals for NOAA's conservation and management mission. They were all killed when their plane crashed on January 26, 2003, during aerial surveys of North Atlantic right whales. The study in which they were participating was contracted by NOAA.

NOAA NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

Robert Macedo, a full-time senior engineer with Works at EMC Corp. in New Bedford, Mass., has been the Skywarn Coordinator for NWS-Taunton since 1994. He has helped the program grow from 800 weather spotters in southern New England (1994) to 3,500 (2003). He drafts and distributes his own e-mail newsletter to more than 700 key spotters and emergency managers, organizes NWS training sessions and uses his personal time to promote the NWS mission. Because of Macedo’s efforts, the NWS receives more real-time reports than ever before, thus having a direct, immediate and positive impact on NWS warning operations. He has also assisted NOAA in surveying storm damage and the implementation and testing of the new high frequency tower/antenna now in place at NWS-Taunton.

Patrick Repman of the City of Midland Emergency Management in Midland, Texas, was instrumental in making the city and county of Midland the first combined city/county government to become StormReady in the state of Texas. Repman scheduled numerous weather spotter talks taught by NOAA NWS personnel, providing NOAA NWS high local visibility at fire station open houses and related civic events, arranging joint weather preparedness presentations to various community and industry workgroups, including NOAA NWS representatives in all emergency management contingency exercises. Repman's individual heroic efforts in making his community of 100,000 citizens StormReady directly assists NOAA in its mission of enhancing economic security and national safety through accurate prediction and awareness of life threatening weather and climate related events.

Marvin O. Hill, a Cooperative Weather Observer/County Office of Emergency Services Director in Beverly, W. Va., continues to apply his knowledge in hydrology and weather to improve the protection of life and property in and around Randolph County, W. Va. Hill works very close with the NWS, supplying them with snow depths and water content, flooding or severe weather problems, informing them of river gauge and automated rain gauge outages throughout the region. He has volunteered countless hours assisting NWS in the communities in and around Randolph County.

John Pulasky, a broadcast meteorologist for the Northern Ag Radio Network and Cooperative Weather Observer for the NOAA National Weather Service in Billings, Mont., has supported NOAA National Weather Service outreach efforts for more than 25 years. He routinely broadcasts information about NWS programs, including the spotter training schedules, which significantly enhances the audience size at these mission-critical training sessions. He routinely interviews staff from the four Montana offices for his portion of a statewide live "call-in" radio show ("Berg in the Morning"). He publicizes each office's annual spotter training schedules and works with the appropriate offices during periods of significant weather. In short, Pulasky continues to enhance the public perception of the NOAA National Weather Service, helps broaden its mission by responsibly disseminating significant weather events and encourages his listeners to heed NWS-generated safety messages.

Don McFarland of Alamo Area Council of Governments in San Antonio, Texas, contributed significant improvement to public safety for South Central Texas over the past decade by obtaining funds for a NOAA Weather Radio, expanding Amateur Radio Skywarn Spotter capabilities, receiving and retransmitting warnings through EMWIN, and acting in numerous life-threatening situations as a Skywarn spotter and net control. As a Skywarn Amateur Radio Operator he helped expand the program, serving both as a spotter and a network controller. His reports at several ungauged locations during the November 2001 and July 2002 flood events were critical in saving lives. McFarland also improved delivery of warnings in severe weather by linking the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network to pagers of local officials.

Carl Ojala of Eastern Michigan University (Dept. of Geography and Geology) in Ypsilanti, Mich., has volunteered his time to conduct NWS SKYWARN Spotter Training seminars for the NOAA National Weather Service every spring since 1994. In his home county of Washtenaw (Ann Arbor - Ypsilanti, Mich.), he typically conducts 3-5 seminars per year. This constitutes the training of roughly 400 severe weather spotters each year on behalf of the NOAA National Weather Service. Furthermore, Ojala has maintained the National Weather Service Cooperative Weather Station at Eastern Michigan University since 1986.

Terry Onslow of the Alaska State Department of Transportation in Girdwood, Alaska, has worked diligently to provide top quality weather information to both the Anchorage Forecast Office and the Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center for nearly two decades. In return, he and the state Department of Transportation received more accurate weather information to support the state DOT avalanche mitigation and road maintenance efforts. Due to Onslow’s work, the NWS has gathered new, high quality weather data along not only the Seward Highway but the entire state road system using the Road Weather Information System. Onslow continues to work with the DOT in adding new observation sites and has recently begun adding NWS precipitation buckets to RWIS sites for use in both assessing liquid precipitation totals and, ultimately, toward improving precipitation forecasts.

Ismael Figueroa with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Office of Disabled People in Miaramar, Puerto Rico, created a hurricane tracking chart for the blind and visually impaired people. This first tactile hurricane tracking chart allows blind and visually impaired people to feel where tropical cyclones are located in the Atlantic and Caribbean basin, the same way Braille makes words readable. Funding from Pfizer Inc. allowed for the chart prototype to be designed and printed, and is now ready for distribution, having been adopted by the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Office.

The Alabama Emergency Response Team (ALERT), volunteers in Calera, Ala., have put in hundreds of hours of time in support of severe weather operations in central Alabama over the past eight years. ALERT is a voluntary organization of mainly amateur radio people who staff the radio equipment in the NWS Birmingham office to maintain direct contact with storm spotters and EMA officials in the field. On Nov. 10, 2002, 11 tornadoes, including two long track F3 tornadoes, killed 12 people across central Alabama during the worst outbreak of severe weather for the entire year. The volunteers with ALERT staffed the amateur radio equipment the Birmingham NWS office and relayed severe weather reports to the warning meteorologists. They also relayed the warnings as they were issued keeping numerous Emergency Management offices informed with the latest information. These reports were crucial to the issuance of new warnings and to impressing upon the public the need for protective action.

NOAA OCEAN SERVICE

Loretta Lawrence, with The Nature Conservancy of the Florida Keys, Fla., has been a volunteer in the Florida Keys since 1996. She has committed her time, equipment and funds to projects in the region. From 1996 until the program was discontinued in 2002, Lawrence took monthly water samples from her dock for the Florida Bay Watch program and has donated the use of her vessel and paid all the expenses of fuel, oil and maintenance during her participation as a diver in support of numerous projects in the area.

Francis H. Smith of Trout Unlimited (Cape Cod Chapter) in Falmouth, Mass., has initiated and led a 29-year effort to restore the Quashnet River in Massachusetts. Once famous for its large and abundant sea run brook trout, the Quashnet River was virtually destroyed by over-fishing, dam construction and cranberry agriculture. Smith has raised funds, lobbied for protection, solicited volunteers and poured his own sweat into the restoration of the Quashnet River. Under his leadership, volunteers cleared the channel of debris, cut back nuisance from the banks, planted hundreds of trees and carefully installed habitat structures made of natural materials. After nearly 30 years, he remains the river's most committed steward.

Morgan Angus and Tara Whittle, students in Lothian, Md., are active and engaging volunteers with the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary (a component of the Chesapeake Bay Reserve in Maryland) and have been extremely involved with associated educational programs, research projects and promotion of environmental issues (specifically the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve System program, Estuary Live). Each of them developed personal interests in specific research taking place at the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary and have become experts in their own right. Most recently, Angus and Whittle were featured on the Maryland segment of Estuary Live, a joint NOAA and EPA Internet broadcast across the country. Both shared their interest in the natural treasure that is the Patuxent River and demonstrated their involvement in radio-tracking research of the Eastern Box Turtle

Clyde Brown, volunteer , retired from nearly 40 years of employment at the International Paper Company—and also a part-time oysterman and processor—in Moss Point, Miss., spent more that 35 years volunteering to protect the fragile, natural resources of coastal Mississippi. Known and well liked throughout his community, Brown is the individual that local citizens turn to on most fishing or coastal development issues. Some of his most notable contributions to NOAA are his efforts to assist in establishing NOAA's 25th National Estuarine Research Reserve and the designation of the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in the 1990s.

NOAA RESEARCH

Capt. Krzysztof Romowicz, Capt. Adam Kedziora, Capt. Darek Grzybek, Capt. Marek Czapiewski, Mieczyslaw Miakinko, Robert Zuk, Janusz Maslanka, Piotr Kaminski, Wlodzimierz Jarzynski, Andrzej Kalicki, Daniel Skrzypek, Konrad Socko of Gdynia Poland, are responsible for 10-year time series of trace gas measurements from a ferry boat in the Baltic Sea. Since 1992, the NOAA Climate Monitoring & Diagnostics Laboratory has had a cooperative project with the Morski Instytut Rybacki and the Stena Line in Gdynia, Poland. Air samples are collected several times per week on regular voyages of the ferry M/V Stena Baltica across the Baltic Sea between Gdynia and Karlskrona, Sweden. The samples are returned to the CMDL laboratories in Boulder, Colo., for measurements of CO2, CH4, CO, H2, N2O, SF6 and the stable isotopes of CO2. As a result of their efforts, NOAA has obtained an excellent record of trace gas measurements from samples collected in the Baltic Sea.

Marianna Pastuszak, an oceanograhpic scientist at the Morski Instytut Rybacki (Sea Fisheries Institute) in Gdynia, Poland, also assisted in collectingg the 10-year time series of trace gas measurements from a ferry boat in the Baltic Sea. Pastuszak ensures that the empty flasks are received from the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, that the flasks are transported to the ferry, that the mates collect the samples, and that the collected samples are retrieved from the ferry and put on the train back to Warsaw. She also monitors the flask supply and communicates with the NOAA Research lab in Boulder, Colo., to ensure that there are enough flasks for uninterrupted sampling. In 2002, when a new ferry came on line, Pastuszak negotiated with the captain to install NOAA equipment on this brand new ship—not an easy task when you need to drill holes and feed airlines to the outside.

Cathy P. McNeil, with Black Birch Studio in Golden, Colo., has volunteered numerous art projects for the NOAA Space Environment Center and NOAA in Boulder, Colo. Her most creative contributions include an education poster, designs for awards, sculptures (including a large sun dial), and paintings that address the mission of NOAA. She has been featured in national magazines for her unique and exciting art design. Her fascination with science is fed by the many scientists in her family.