Do these teams support response and data collection for only natural hazardous events?
JERRY MILLS: With hurricanes, our navigation response teams and our fleet of NOAA ships have some lead time to prepare and plan for emergency hydrographic surveying. However, sometimes, we have no notice when a man-made disaster, such as an oil spill or airline accident, happens. A recent example is in the U.S. Airways emergency plane landing on New York’s Hudson River. Within minutes, our New England-based Navigation Response Team became aware of the situation, and began work immediately. Unfortunately, at the time, their boat was unavailable, but the team used their close connections with the New York and New Jersey police and fire boats, and also the FBI and Army Corps of Engineers, to provide surveying expertise in finding debris from the emergency landing including the missing engines. Other notable incidents that your listeners may not know about NOAA is that our hydrographic survey vessels discovered the site of John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999 a
