Whale of Grant For Stranding Network
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 – For the third consecutive year, the Cape Cod Stranding Network in Buzzards Bay has received the maximum grant awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.
The non-profit organization, responsible for responding to stranded mammals on almost 700 miles of coastline stretching from Cape Cod to the Rhode Island border, will use the $100,000 Prescott Grant to improve daily operations and conduct a joint project with the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center to streamline data collection, said Kristen Patchett, the network’s stranding coordinator.
Named after longtime New England Aquarium executive director John Prescott, the grants were introduced by the Department of Commerce, the oceanographic administration’s parent, to fill a void in funding.
“Unfortunately, in the past there was never any funding,” Patchett said. “Marine mammals were protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but we weren’t funded.”
Patchett and network program director Katie Touhey submitted their first proposals in 2001 and received two inaugural grants in 2002. In 2003, they won a third. The money, Patchett said, has had “a huge impact.”
Prior to the grants, the network was forced to depend entirely on donations from individuals, private foundations and other non-profit groups.
“We’ve increased our staff, we’ve been able to upgrade a lot of our equipment and we collect better data from animals,” Patchett said.
Dana Hartley, Northeast stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that before the introduction of the Prescott grants, she had very little money to divide among the 15 stranding organizations in her sector, which covers coastal waters from the northern tip of Maine through southernmost Virginia.
“These organizations were doing the same work pretty much on their own,” Hartley said. “I couldn’t offer them very much in the way of help.”
The Cape Cod network reports all incidents to Hartley, and she praised the network’s performance in what she called the “hotspot” area of mammal strandings in the United States.
As of Tuesday, the network had responded to 199 strandings this year. The network generally reports 200-300 incidents annually, Patchett said. While there were no mass strandings this summer like in 2002, there have been many incidents involving Harp seals, which migrate south from Canada.
Patchett laughed nervously when asked about the possibility of not receiving the grant money in the future.
“These grants are needed,” she said. “We’re one of the busiest places in the world for strandings, it would severely limit what we could do.”
