ecosystem is declining as a result of the cumulative effects of 

 human activities in this densely populated area. 



Both EPA and NOAA have had and still have research and 

 monitoring programs in the New York Bight. 



NOAA 



NOAA, through its National Marine Fisheries 

 Service and Office of Marine Assessment, is 

 concerned with abundance of living marine 

 resources and the status of their habitats — 

 thus activities such as fishery management 

 and pollution monitoring logically fall 

 within the agency's purview. Legislative 

 authorities are derived from the Fisheries 

 Conservation and Management Act and the 

 Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries 

 Act. The resource-oriented responsibilities 

 thus can integrate well with the water 

 quality-oriented responsibilities of EPA when 

 questions arise about possible effects of 

 environmental degradation on living 

 resources. NOAA has had a long history of 

 data acquisition in the New York Bight, 

 beginning in the early 1970's with a detailed 

 study funded in part by the U. S. Corps of 

 Engineers. The long term NOAA-MESA Project 

 for the New York Bight provided a much larger 

 data base, which has been augmented by 

 continuing research and monitoring by the 

 NOAA-NMFS Sandy Hook Laboratory. 



In FY 1984, the Ocean Assessments Division of NOAA 

 initiated a new program called the National Status and 

 Trends (NS&T) Program, within which a series of 

 activities were undertaken to quantify the current 

 status and long-term, temporal and spatial trends of 

 key contaminant concentrations and biological 

 indicators of effects in the nation's coastal and 

 estuarine environments. The program's purposes were to 

 provide highly reliable data on concentrations of toxic 

 chemicals in marine fish, shellfish, and sediments, to 

 measure biologic parameters that accurately reflect 

 anthropogenic stress, and to assess marine 

 environmental quality and recommend Federal actions 

 needed to maintain or improve it. Key questions the 

 program intends to answer are (1) what are the current 

 environmental quality conditions of the nation's 

 coastal zone and (2) are these conditions getting 

 better or worse? A nationally uniform set of 

 measurement techniques is employed to determine marine 

 environmental quality parameters. In conducting the 

 program, NOAA cooperates with, and acquires data from. 



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