NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) works in partnership with other federal agencies and coastal states to conduct assessments of ecological condition and potential stressor impacts throughout our Nation’s estuaries, coastal-ocean waters, and NOAA protected areas; carry out studies to determine environmental impacts of specific pollution events or natural disasters; and perform additional related research to develop new ecological indicators and improved diagnostic tools to assess, predict, and manage future conditions.

NCCOS has conducted a series of Regional Ecological Assessments (REA) aimed at evaluating condition of living resources and ecosystem stressors in estuarine and coastal areas including National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS), National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS), and continental shelf regions of the Mid-Atlantic Bight, South-Atlantic Bight, Florida Shelf, and Gulf of Mexico. Information from these studies provides a means to assess the current status of ecological condition and stressor impacts throughout these areas, and serves as a baseline for evaluating future changes due to natural or human-induced disturbances.

The NOAA National Benthic Inventory (NBI) is a quantitative database on benthic species distributions obtained from studies conducted by NOAA and partnering institutions in estuarine and other coastal-ocean areas around the country.

A corresponding taxonomic voucher collection of preserved benthic specimens collected in studies conducted between 1991 and 2007 was maintained at the NCCOS Charleston lab until April 2019. The voucher collection was transferred to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in May 2019 and will be incorporated into their Non-Molluscan Invertebrate research collections. More information can be found at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences website.