NOAA Ship Nancy Foster seen on Savannah waters before explorations in the Atlantic, Gulf coasts
SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Before embarking on the 2026 Southeast Regional Ecosystem Assessment, NOAA’s Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary and NOAA Ship Nancy Foster held an open house on River Street.
Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary is cared for and treasured by divers, anglers, scientists, and conservationists.
Lt. Commander Dustin Picard, commanding officer of the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster, “Former NOAA administrator, Dr. Rick Spinrad, used to say, ‘For seven cents a day, NOAA touches every single American life every single day.’”
NOAA designated the area, off the Georgia Coast, as a national marine sanctuary in 1981 because of its diversity of species and abundance of marine life. Almost 1,000 species of invertebrates (animals without a backbone) and 200 species of fish have been identified at Gray’s Reef.
NOAA Ship Nancy Foster was built by McDermott Inc. in Amelia, Louisiana. The ship was commissioned on May 10, 2004 and is currently homeported in Charleston, South Carolina.
Nancy Foster is one of the most operationally diverse platforms in the NOAA fleet, they said.
“It’s one able to kind of show the general public what we’re doing here for the state of Georgia and the city of Savannah, but also just kind of on a broader scale, opening up people’s eyes to what NOAA does as a collective agency,” Picard said.
Officers from the Nancy Foster, along with scientists from Grays Reef and divers from the Georgia Aquarium, guided guests through the ship from noon to 3 p.m. Informational booths along the pier featured activities from the sanctuary, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, and the ship’s crew.
