Funding & Collaboration

Sea Grant works in close partnership with the NOAA Marine Debris Program to address marine debris in coastal and Great Lakes environments.The funds for these Sea Grant activities is part of nearly $3 billion in targeted investments by NOAA in the areas of habitat restoration, coastal resilience and weather forecasting infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The ultimate goal of all the projects funded under the Marine Debris Initiative is to reduce the burden of marine debris on human communities and coastal ecosystems in Maine and throughout the Gulf of Maine. We aim to to produce and share a model for stakeholder-engaged research and a decision support tool that will help to extend and replicate the work beyond our target area. To ensure this, each of our three projects are committed to collaboration with local partners from communities reliant on healthy coastal ecosystems for economic, social, and cultural well-being, with a high proportion of residents who participate in subsistence, recreational, and commercial fishing and aquaculture, or rely on ecotourism-related industries for their livelihoods.