Articles

• Building a Better World
• 10 Questions on Marine Education
• Lou D'Abramo Awarded Honors
• ELBs Track Gulf Shrimping Effort
• Dr. Sharon Walker Promotes Ocean Literacy
• Mississippi Team Wins Hurricane Bowl
• Research in the Gulf
• Featured Publication
• From the Director

Sea Briefs is a report on the results of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

Editor: Valerie Winn

Top photo: Chris Snyder

This newsletter is available in PDF format from:
masgc.org/seabriefs

MASGC supports applied, interdisciplinary marine science research, education and outreach efforts to foster the sustainable development and management of the Mississippi and Alabama coasts and nearshore ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico

Mississippi-Alabama
Sea Grant Consortium
703 East Beach Drive
Ocean Springs, MS 39564
Phone: 228-818-8840
E-mail: seabriefs@masgc.org
MASGP 07-011-02

From the Director

Nation-wide, the Sea Grant network delivers the majority of NOAA’s education and outreach programs through an estimated 420 non-federal full time equivalents funded by the 30 Sea Grant College Programs. The extent of Sea Grant’s support for education and outreach may surprise those not familiar with the Land Grant model used to craft the federal authorization establishing the National Sea Grant College Program in the late 1960s. The Sea Grant model is based on the highly coordinated and integrated use of research, education and outreach to solve real world problems for coastal constituents.

Some compare this approach to a thee-legged stool that only functions properly when all three legs are intact. As one of 30 programs in the Sea Grant Network, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium also places a premium on education and outreach programs in support of our applied research mission. For example, an annual expenditure of approximately $475,000 (35%) by the MASGC is devoted to education and outreach programs aligned directly with local and national research priorities. When you add graduate education to this total you quickly realize the high value placed on marine science education and outreach by the MASGC.

The programs implemented by MASGC supported education and outreach staff relies on close partnerships among our Consortium members, other NOAA partners, other federal partners, state/local governments, non-profit organizations, and private industry. In this issue of Sea Briefs a few examples of MASGC supported education programs are highlighted at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Mobile County’s Environmental Studies Center and the University of Southern Mississippi’s Marine Education Center.