The Ocean Foundation (TOF) is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit international community foundation dedicated to support, strengthen and promote organizations that work to reverse the trend of destruction of ocean environments around the world. It supports ocean conservation solutions globally, focusing on all aspects of a healthy ocean, at local, regional, national and global levels.
The agreement builds on an existing collaboration between NOAA and The Ocean Foundation, to expand scientific capacity in developing nations to research, monitor and address the challenges of ocean acidification. The NOAA Ocean Acidification Program and TOF currently co-manage a quarterly scholarship fund, which is a part of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) offsite link.
These scholarships support collaborative ocean acidification research, training and travel needs, so early career scientists from developing countries can gain skills and experience from more senior researchers. TOF and NOAA have partnered in recent years on eight training workshops for more than 150 scientists in Africa, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, and Caribbean. The workshops have helped prepare researchers to establish some of the first long-term ocean acidification monitoring in their countries. Over the course of 2020-2023, TOF and NOAA will work together with GOA-ON and other partners to implement a program building capacity for ocean acidification research across the Pacific Islands region, funded by the U.S. Department of State.
The NOAA-TOF partnership is the latest in a series of new science and technology partnerships NOAA has created over the last year. The partnerships help support the Presidential Memorandum on Ocean Mapping of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and Shoreline and Near Shore of Alaska and the goals announced at a November 2019 White House Summit on Partnerships in Ocean Science and Technology.
The partnership can also support global ocean initiatives, including the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project offsite link to map the entire seabed by 2030 and the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. offsite link
Other key partnerships for ocean science, technology, and discovery include those with Vulcan Inc., Caladan Oceanic, Viking, OceanX, Ocean Infinity, Schmidt Ocean Institute, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Media contact:
Monica Allen, NOAA, (202) 379-6693
Jason Donofrio, The Ocean Foundation, (202) 318-3178
