Rhode Island’s Ocean and Coastal Magazine
Summer 2016: Urban
From the Editor
“WE’VE COME A LONG WAY IN 20 YEARS.”
So said one of Sea Grant’s founders, John Knauss, then-University of Rhode Island vice president for marine programs, in 1985, as he hosted a nationwide gathering of Sea Grant programs in Newport.
Conference speakers were frank in describing the challenges to a program that began in just four states in 1966. Universities, home to these new programs, had not known quite what to do with them. A nascent international Sea Grant program had been phased out. The Reagan Administration annually attempted to cut Sea Grant from the federal budget.
More happily, speakers noted that Sea Grant’s marine research, uniquely at that time, had to pass muster with peer reviewers and users alike. Its outreach programs were demonstrating value to government agencies and constituents, and revenue from projects nationwide was estimated at $62 million.
Speakers also identified possibilities for Sea Grant in new technologies, policy developments—including the adoption of the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for federal waters—and areas such as aquaculture.
Those emerging opportunities have unfolded here in Rhode Island, and Rhode Island Sea Grant has been involved—in ocean planning in the EEZ, leading to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, in research and extension efforts in aquaculture, which reached a record $5.6 million value in 2015, and in funding projects using the latest seafloor mapping capabilities, which have led to new discoveries, most recently of Rhode Island’s largest ship graveyard (see page 14).
This year, Newport will again host a Sea Grant conference, marking the program’s 50th anniversary. It will be attended by members from the national office, the 33 state programs around the U.S.—and South Korea Sea Grant. We have indeed come a long way.
—MONICA ALLARD COX, Editor
Write us
Please write to Letters, 41°N Editorial Office, Rhode Island Sea Grant, URI Bay Campus, Narragansett, RI 02882, or email 41N@gso.uri.edu.
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HILDA AND NORMAN POPPE HAVE A ROUTINE FOR lunch on Tuesdays. They head to Oakland Beach, order chowder and clam cakes from a favorite take-out window, and sit at a picnic table facing Greenwich Bay. Longtime Warwick residents, the couple delights in the relaxing...
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AT INDIA POINT PARK IN PROVIDENCE, DESPITE THE PICTURESQUE views of the bay, boats, and birds, it’s easy to see that nature has taken a pounding from the last few centuries of humanity. The shallow waters along the shore are spiked with the ragged remains of ancient...
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