Assistance program
Marine Debris Program
$167.4 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commerce, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 11.999
- What it does
- To provide grants and cooperative agreements to help identify, determine sources of, assess, reduce, and prevent marine debris and its adverse impacts on the marine environment and navigation safety within the coastal United States, territories, and Freely Associated States. Awards that are made under this program from annual appropriations, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Supplemental Appropriations Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021) will remove marine debris from coastal habitats, including through interception technologies; explore non-regulatory incentives to reduce the quantity and impacts of derelict fishing gear, abandoned and derelict vessels, and other large debris; support regional coordination among marine debris practitioners, states, and tribes; conduct outreach and education activities aimed at preventing marine debris; develop interagency plans to respond to “severe marine debris events†and other natural disasters; assess debris composition, volume, and trajectory in different marine and coastal ecosystems; conduct research and development on marine debris impacts and distribution; and estimate the potential impacts of marine debris on coastal resources, habitats, and economies.
- Who benefits
- This program benefits Federal, State, and interstate marine resource conservation and management agencies; U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States; U.S. and foreign commercial and recreational fishing industries; conservation organizations, academic institutions; international and Indian Tribal treaties; private and public research groups; consumers; and the general public.
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants for assistance include 1) state and local governments including public universities and colleges; 2) U.S. territorial agencies and organizations; 3) federally and State-recognized Indian Tribal governments; 4) private universities and colleges; 5) private / commercial for-profit organizations; and 6) nonprofit research and conservation organizations.
- Authorized by
- Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act (33 U.S.C. § 1951 et seq.), as amended by the Save Our Seas Act of 2018 (P.L. 115-265)
- Program site
- http://www.marinedebris.noaa.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments