What is the budget for the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program?
The MMHSRP was established in 1992 and initial funding focused on contaminant analyses and tissue banking. Over the last 5 years funding has increased to include disease and health related issues and stranding network training. The stranding network receives $50K per year with each NMFS regional network receiving $10K. The money is used for regional supplies, responses, analyses, training and education or outreach. In addition, there has been additional small amounts of money ($10-20K per year) available for large whale response with the focus being on right whales as a priority. Each region has a Regional Coordinator (either full time or only 10% time NMFS employee) and may allocate a small amount of money for regional responses also. Finally, meetings and workshops are held for additional training to the network, and these vary in numbers from year to year (1998 had two workshops totaling $50K). Unusual mortality response contingency fund never received funds from 1992 to 1999. This
