Sand Point Facility
7600 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115
The facility is located on the shore of Lake Washington and is adjacent to the Sand Point Naval Air Station.
Sand Point research activities are primarily concerned with fisheries research activities in the North Pacific. The Center Directorate provides overall management and policy direction for research activities. The RACE Division, with personnel in Kodiak, AK, Newport, OR as well as Sand Point, focuses on groundfish assessment, pelagic assessments, shellfish assessment, fishery resource pathology, recruitment processes, and conservation engineering. Resource surveys are conducted to gather information on the distribution and abundance of major groundfish and crab stocks off Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California.
Using the information produced by the RACE Division, the REFM Division evaluates the status of the fish stocks in the eastern Bering Sea and northeastern Pacific, and examines how stocks are affected by changing biological, economic, and physical conditions. The activities and efforts of fishing fleets are monitored to evaluate economic performance and to estimate how they will be affected by changing economic and regulatory conditions. Division activities are organized into the foreign fisheries observer program, age and growth studies, ecosystem investigations, status of stocks evaluations, and economic analysis.
The Office of Fisheries Information Systems manages a computer network to provide automatic data processing and fisheries information services for research activities in the Pacific Northwest, Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. A nationwide telecommunications network is maintained to allow access and use of the mainframe computer.
Created by Congress in 1985, the Marine Entanglement Research Program addresses issues associated with persistent wastes in the ocean and coastal environment. Program activities include research into impacts of debris on wildlife; nationwide monitoring of debris on beaches; educational programs on debris problems and their solutions; evaluation on technological solutions; and analysis of regional, national and international policy and regulatory alternatives.
The NMML conducts research on fisheries conflicts and interactions with marine mammals, status of depleted and recovering species, marine mammal oceanographic investigations, and ecosystem dynamics and assessments. Research includes population dynamics and distribution, and life histories studies of large whales, dolphins, seals and sea lions. Major program activities focus on the northern (Stellar) sea lion; northern fur seal; bowhead, humpback and gray whales; ecology of Antarctic seals; and studies Dall's porpoise and other marine mammals in high seas driftnet fisheries.