NOAA Restoration Day 2010

  • NOAA volunteers plant switch grass on the shore near the Cooperative Oxford Lab. Dr. Larry Robinson (left), Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, joined in on restoration day activities.
  • volunteers getting ready to work
  • planting trees
  • volunteers restoring oysters or reef
  • close-up of planting switch grass
  • fish seining
  • close-up of horseshoe crab shell
  • osprey and small crab
  • digital elevation mapping
  • Oxford Lab beach
  • NOAA Research Vessel Laidly
  • Digital elevation mapping

More than 170 NOAA employees and partners from the Environmental Protection Agency, Oyster Recovery Partnership, and Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently spent a day away from their offices to participate in the seventh annual NOAA Restoration Day.

Organized by the National Ocean Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, this day is one of the largest voluntary federal employee-sponsored environmental stewardship events in the Chesapeake Bay watershed region.

This year, volunteers gathered at NOAA's Cooperative Oxford Laboratory on the eastern shore of Maryland.

Over the course of the day, teams participated in a variety of restoration activities around the lab, ranging from planting switch grass that had been grown indoors at NOAA Headquarters, to restoring native oysters on an offshore reef, to digital elevation mapping.

The event is an annual opportunity for NOAA employees to put into action the mission they support in their office work and to help restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay.