The West Coast Ocean Alliance (WCOA), the designated Regional Ocean Partnership (ROP) for the West Coast, will receive approximately $3.9M of new funding over the next two years from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This Law authorized funding for established Regional Ocean Partnerships for five years to support the interstate and intertribal management of ocean and coastal resources. The summary below highlights the projects the WCOA plans to support with the first year of funding, covering December 2022 through November 2023. You can download a PDF of this project summary by clicking here.
WCOA 5-year Strategic Plan
The WCOA will develop a new 5-year strategic plan to guide all activities of the WCOA. This work will include extensive engagement with WCOA members to inform planning efforts, as well as outreach with regional ocean stakeholders to help define the most appropriate regional role and associated activities for the WCOA moving forward.
WCOA Staff & Capacity
The funding will support the WCOA Executive Director, a new full-time Project Coordinator and a new full-time Tribal Coordinator This team will facilitate more efficient engagement with WCOA members, expand outreach activities, and help oversee project progress and deliverables.
Tribal Capacity and Support
The WCOA will create a new funding program dedicated to tribal government members of the WCOA, to ensure Tribes can participate in all WCOA activities they choose and support additional tribal ocean planning work relevant to WCOA regional priorities, if applicable.
West Coast Fellowship Program
Working with Sea Grant offices on the West Coast, the WCOA plans to launch a new fellowship program to support WCOA regional priorities. The WCOA fellowship program will create a regional cohort of fellows to further increase the capacity of the WCOA to engage in member-driven projects related to ocean planning, science, data, and management.
Regional Ocean Summits
The WCOA will fund and facilitate three separate in-person gatherings of WCOA members and stakeholders, focused on the topics of tribal engagement, offshore wind, and an all-inclusive WCOA meeting. These meetings will allow the WCOA to effectively convene ocean partners, help determine the future efforts of the group, strengthen relationships, and build new partnerships.
West Coast Aquaculture Inventory
The WCOA will create a new regional database to track existing, proposed, and potential future areas of ocean-based aquaculture on the West Coast. This will increase WCOA member and stakeholder awareness and transparency of aquaculture development, while also informing future WCOA work on developing best practices for aquaculture management and policy.
Tribal Engagement Training Program
The WCOA will develop and launch a new tribal engagement training program. The WCOA will work with the Alliance’s tribal members to build on the existing tribal engagement guidance document to develop tribal engagement training for federal, state, and other relevant audiences.
Tribal Capacity and Support
The WCOA will create a new funding program dedicated to tribal government members of the WCOA, to ensure Tribes can participate in all WCOA activities they choose and support additional tribal ocean planning work relevant to WCOA regional priorities, if applicable.
Enhanced Communication
The WCOA will enhance all aspects of communications, outreach, and public engagement, including an improved website, expanded use of social media, public engagement tools, and other mechanisms to build awareness about WCOA efforts. Communications work will also focus on amplifying future WCOA project outcomes achieved in partnership with WCOA members.
West Coast Ocean Health Dashboard
The West Coast Ocean Health Dashboard, being developed in partnership with the West Coast Ocean Data Portal, will add new regional ocean health indicators through contracts with regional scientific and data experts. The growing suite of indicators will strengthen the role of the dashboard as a leading tool to identify ocean planning needs and progress on the West Coast.
West Coast Ocean Data Portal
The WCOA will support ongoing technical maintenance and improvements for the West Coast Ocean Data Portal, which serves as the primary mechanism for the coordination and sharing of ocean-related data for WCOA activities.
TRIBAL AWARDS - BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW FUNDING
For fiscal years 2022 to 2023, $20.5 million will be used to fund 13 awards under the Regional Ocean Partnerships provision of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These awards are designed to address regional interstate and intertribal ocean and coastal management issues in several ways, including improved data sharing and integration. Four awards have been made to tribal entities, all of which are engaged with the West Coast Ocean Alliance (WCOA), the designated Regional Ocean Partnership (ROP) for the West Coast. The summary below highlights the tribal entity projects. You can download a PDF of this summary by clicking here.
Enhancing the Makah Tribe’s Engagement in Regional Ocean Planning and Management
The goal of this award is to enhance the Makah Tribe’s ability to execute regional ocean planning initiatives by increasing their mapping capabilities. The Makah Tribe is an active participant in the West Coast Ocean Alliance. However, limited staffing capacity affects their ability to analyze the impacts of projects and programs that could affect their ocean and coast-related treaty rights and resources. This funding will attempt to address this by 1) hiring an ocean mapping specialist; 2) identifying Makah information needs and gaps in the West Coast Ocean Alliance Data Portal; and 3) developing data products, sharing lessons learned, contributing to tribal-focused data products, and identifying needs for future research. As a strong partner of the West Coast Ocean Alliance, the Makah Tribe’s efforts will also provide immediate and tangible benefits to the alliance.
Quinault Indian Nation Participation and Engagement with the West Coast Ocean Alliance, a Regional Ocean Partnership
This award will be used to enhance the Quinault Indian Nation’s ability to engage with federal and state agencies on ocean usage by providing the means for tribal leadership and staff to participate, in person, in West Coast Ocean Alliance efforts. This tribe has been a member of this regional ocean partnership since the partnership’s inception. Tribal leadership has been attending meetings remotely due to the pandemic, but the gradual return to in-person activities, and even more importantly, the increasing demand for ocean resources, makes it imperative that Quinault Indian Nation leadership attend in person to properly engage as decisions are being made regarding ocean use in their territory. With this funding, the Quinault Indian Nation will host one West Coast Ocean Alliance-related meeting, and tribal leadership and staff will be able to attend the annual meeting, as well as other ancillary forums, such as the tribal caucus meeting, the data portal meeting, and other tribe-related meetings.
Quileute Indian Tribe Real-Time Hypoxia Monitoring Moorings
This funding will be used to better understand and predict hypoxia events along the Washington shelf. To do this, the Quileute Tribe and the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, will improve real-time hypoxia monitoring and prediction by refurbishing and redesigning the two existing monitoring systems and building one new system. These systems will measure and report existing near-bottom oxygen concentration, and will predict the movement of hypoxic conditions. Data processed through the laboratory will supply critical information needs identified through the West Coast Ocean Alliance and the West Coast Ocean Data Portal.
Enhanced Data Management Capacity among the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, its Four Member Tribes, and the West Coast Ocean Alliance
This award will enhance the ability of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and its four member tribes to participate in regional data sharing and upgrade their existing data management and sharing infrastructure. In addition to more tribal engagement with West Coast Ocean Alliance data activities, the funding will be used to improve the tribes’ centralized data management systems to include enhanced user interfaces, more thorough metadata, improved data exchange standards, and the inclusion of more traditional ecological knowledge fields. Additional tribal data sets will also be added. Additionally, the project will increase the capacity of the tribes to effectively share data with regional repositories like the West Coast Ocean Data Portal.