Along Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, NOAA and the Quinault Indian Nation are working together to restore one of the region’s most important salmon rivers. For the Quinault people, salmon are more than a resource: they are central to their culture and livelihood. As salmon populations decline, so does the foundation of that heritage. This partnership is built on a shared commitment: to heal the Upper Quinault River and rebuild “blueback” sockeye salmon stocks.

With funding from NOAA Fisheries, The Nature Conservancy and partners are advancing science to bring sunflower sea stars back to California. This keystone species is critical to kelp forest health, but functionally extinct in the state due to a wasting disease. Together, partners are rearing juvenile sea stars in laboratories and conducting research on their behavior and genetics. The ultimate goal: cross-breeding a genetically diverse group of stars that can be outplanted in the wild.

The Roanoke River in North Carolina is one of the largest and wildest rivers on the East Coast, providing essential spawning habitat for fish like striped bass, river herring, and endangered Atlantic sturgeon. Although the river is mostly undeveloped, many old culverts and other small barriers disrupt its floodplain. These structures can block fish from reaching their spawning areas or trap them in standing water where low oxygen levels can kill them. With funding from NOAA Fisheries, The Nature Conservancy is working to remove these barriers.

Our partners at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science developed an online, interactive tool that calculates ecosystem and economic benefits for marsh restoration projects in Virginia’s Middle Peninsula. Knowing the benefits that land owners and communities would get from projects can help decision makers prioritize where to allocate funding.

Monitoring of the Palos Verdes Reef restoration project in Southern California reveals that the 70,000 tons of quarry rock, deposited in 2020, have successfully restored an area contaminated by DDTs and other toxins and buried by sediment. The report shows: Total and fish biomass increased by 1,178% and 166%, respectively; shifting sediment uncovered an acre of buried natural reef; and no invasive algae or invertebrates were detected.

The once-barren seafloor is now a thriving ecosystem of kelp forests supporting harbor seals, shrimp, and diverse fish populations.

To address juvenile sea turtle bycatch in the Gulf, the DWH Open Ocean TIG designed and tested turtle excluder devices with reduced bar spacing. Final reports show that these modifications successfully reduce bycatch–while causing no significant decrease in shrimp catch. The project team collaborated with the otter trawl shrimp fishery to gather input from start to finish. A follow-up project will continue to engage with the fishery and encourage the voluntary use of these new devices.