Recent Grants

The Woods Hole Sea Grant program, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), supports research, education, and extension projects that encourage environmental stewardship, long-term economic development, and responsible use of the nation's coastal and ocean resources.

?Each year Woods Hole Sea Grant allocates part of its budget for Program Development (PD) funds. Awards are generally for small research projects and proof-of-concept with the intent of seeding an idea for later development into larger funding proposals. Other credible uses of these funds include extension, education, communications, travel, graduate student support, and workshops or conferences. Applicants must express how the proposed project will add value to Woods Hole Sea Grant's research, extension, education, and outreach efforts in the program's current strategic focus areas. Those focuses areas are:

• Healthy Coastal Ecosystems
  • Issues related to healthy coastal ecosystems on the coast of Massachusetts and in Northeastern U.S. are similar to those issues experienced in other areas of the U.S. coastline.
• Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture
  • Woods Hole Sea Grant has identified the revitalization of our nation's fisheries and sustainable aquaculture as priority areas that fit within the capacity of the academic and research environment within the region served by our program.
• Environmental Literacy and Workforce Development
  • Sea Grant has assumed the responsibility to improve the environmental literacy of the general public, to inform teachers and informal educators of new advances in science and technology, to inform decision makers of advances in science that informs policy, and to assist in the training of undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and law students.
• Resilient Communities and Economies
  • Coastal communities in the U.S. provide a wide range of economic, social, and recreational opportunities. Over one third of the population of Massachusetts lives along the coastline. At the same time, coastal ponds, embayments, open coasts, and coastal resources may be impacted by society's commercial, recreational and residential activities.

These funds will be provided to projects that align with Woods Hole Sea Grant's strategic goals and objectives. Preference is given to projects for which Sea Grant has a vested interest and those which leverage other resources. Although these funds can be used for workshops, conference, and travel support, less than 25% of the funds will be used in that manner with preference for research, extension, and education-related projects. Development funds are limited such that we often have many more requests for funding than we can support.