Back ||NOAA Home Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr. Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Remarks at NANCY FOSTER Commissioning May 10, 2004, 1 p.m. EDT Charleston, S.C. Good afternoon everybody! I’m delighted to be in Charleston today, and I’d like to thank you for being here as we commission this ship. My thanks go to our distinguished visitors from the Navy, CAPT Robert Zalaskus, CO Naval Weapons Station, Charleston; the Coast Guard, CAPT Tim Tunstall, CO USCG Group Charleston; the Maritime Association Port of Charleston, John Hassell, President; our state, local and academic partners; Admiral Prahl and Commander Rossmann; and all the NOAA team members, and their families and friends. Many of you know we tried to have this commissioning last September when a not-so-little storm named Isabel stirred things up along the east coast! As I’ve said several times since then, it’s good for NOAA to have a severe weather event in the Nation’s capital every once in a while! It gives us an opportunity to impress upon people in Washington what NOAA can do and does everyday. What NOAA does and what this ship does is extremely important to the U.S. economy. Did you know that NOAA’s work affects 30-40% of our Nation’s GDP every year? That’s upwards of $3 trillion! A significant part of NOAA’s work to understand, protect, and restore our coastal and ocean resources happens right here in South Carolina. In the Charleston area we have NOAA’s Coastal Services Center, the Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Bio-molecular Research, the Hollings Marine Lab, named for our great friend the Senator who has shown deep interest in NOAA’s work, the North-Inlet Winyah Bay and ACE Basin National Estuarine Research Reserves, and the NWS Weather Forecast Office. We also have the NOAA ships RONALD H. BROWN and NANCY FOSTER home-ported here. Though it happened a few years ago now, I want to thank our partners in the U.S. Navy for transferring this ship to us! Because we have a strong partnership with the Navy, many of you know, NOAA has received a number of Navy ships in the last decade. With these transfers, including the NANCY FOSTER, we keep these ships in operation and in valuable service to the Nation. I also thank Scott Gudes, the previous Deputy Under Secretary at NOAA for his leading role in the transfer of this ship to NOAA. And thanks are due to all the folks at NOAA’s Marine Operations Center and crew for their work in preparing this vessel to meet NOAA’s mission. The NANCY FOSTER replaced the FERREL that was an important step in renewing the NOAA fleet. NOAA Ship FERREL served the Nation well for many years. But old ships eventually need replacement. Last year our average ship age decreased from 33.6 years to 28.2 years. That’s progress! This year we’re commissioning or reactivating four more ships! We still have a long way to go to get our fleet age down to where it should be, but we have developed a 10-year fleet plan that charts a way to get there. It’s critical to NOAA to have a technologically capable fleet of ships to collect the data we need to make important decisions affecting our nation’s economic security. This ship directly supports NOAA’s mission goals. One of those goals is to protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management. Currently, more than half the US population - 141 million people - resides within 50 miles of the coast. Over the next 15 years, the coastal population is projected to increase by 24.7 million people, reaching 166 million people by the year 2015. Population pressures on coastal ecosystems will increase. Right now we have a profound lack of understanding of events in these coastal areas. For instance... how long does a crab live? 3 years? 8 years? We don’t really know. There is an enormous need for research. The NANCY FOSTER undertakes a broad range of ecosystem surveying and sampling missions to further our understanding of these ecosystems. Often the ship supports missions in partnership with consortiums, colleges and universities located right here in South Carolina, like the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. I’m really pleased to see guests from the College of Charleston and Coastal Carolina University here today–folks who bring education and research projects aboard the NANCY FOSTER. In closing, I want to comment on the remarkable namesake of this ship, Dr. Nancy Foster, herself. Many of you here today were privileged to know her. I never had that honor. But I’ll comment on the lasting impact she has had on science and NOAA. “Bio-diversity, watersheds, and ecosystems” were terms that were not well recognized or broadly accepted by managers during her early career. She understood the need to manage from a systems approach, and she was a leader in the push for an ecosystems approach to management. NOAA has since adopted ecosystem-based management as one of our mission goals. Nancy was also a strong force behind the first action to achieve a diverse NOAA workforce. She started the first mentoring program from which the NOAA program has been modeled, and she was a vital force in NOAA Fisheries and NOAA Oceans and Coasts, bringing new energy and vitality to NOAA. Though her passing was marked by the spreading of her ashes at sea from NOAA Ship RUDE in the approaches to Chesapeake Bay, she has not been forgotten. She may have been taken from us prematurely, but she left a remarkable legacy behind in NOAA and in many of our hearts. I am happy to mark that legacy with the commissioning of this ship that is dedicated to the research and education work Nancy held so dear. Thank you very much.