The Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program coordinates emergency responses to sick, injured, distressed, or dead seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, and whales. The 1992 Amendments to the Marine Mammal Protection Act formalized this program and designated NOAA Fisheries' Office of Protected Resources as the lead agency to coordinate related activities. The program focuses on four primary areas:
- Stranding and entanglement networks.
- Unusual mortality event response.
- Biosurvelliance and baseline health research.
- John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program.
Stranding and Entanglement Response Networks
The MMHSRP works with volunteer stranding and entanglement networks as well as local, tribal, state, and federal government agencies to coordinate and conduct emergency responses to stranded or entangled marine mammals. The Program provides network members with a Stranding Agreement from the NOAA Fisheries regional offices to ensure that all activities performed are safe for both responders and animals. The network members provide staff and local response capabilities, independently raising funds to cover the majority of their costs. The stranding and entanglement networks also perform a valuable biosurveillance role, as they are often the first to detect threats to marine mammal populations. To that end, stranding networks provide data to the MMHSRP by using the Level A Stranding Report form (PDF, 2 pages) and these data are stored in the National Stranding Database.
Unusual Mortality Event Response
While marine mammal strandings occur frequently, there are some cases where an unusually high number of live or dead animals may come ashore over a relatively short time span in the same geographic area. These Unusual Mortality Events can be a result of events such as a disease outbreak, environmental factors, or oil spills. The MMHSRP coordinates the Working Group on Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events, which leads the response and investigation into the causes of the UME.
You can contribute to the Unusual Mortality Event Fund, which helps fund our stranding networks’ response to, and investigation of, these events.
Biosurvelliance and Baseline Health Research
Biosurveillance and baseline health research on marine mammals are important components of the program. While not “emergency response,” these studies provide context during a health emergency and may help predict when and where events may occur in the future. An important aspect of this program is the National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank, which provides protocols and techniques for the long-term storage of samples from marine mammals that can be used as baseline health comparisons for retrospective analyses.
John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program
The Prescott Grant Program provides funding for members of the national marine mammal stranding network through a competitive grant process. Since 2001, the Program has provided over $60.2 million dollars to our stranding network partners through 696 grants. These grants support the rescue and rehabilitation of stranded marine mammals, data collection from living or dead stranded marine mammals for health research, and facility operation costs.
Regional Programs
More Information
- Marine Mammal Protection Act Policies, Guidance and Regulations
- Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program (2009)
- See also: 2018 Notice of Intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. This PEIS will address changes to increase efficiencies made in the program since the initial PEIS was published in 2009.
- Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program: Program Development Plan (1994.)
