NOAA ships and aircraft

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) operates a wide variety of specialized aircraft and ships to complete NOAA's environmental and scientific missions. OMAO also manages the NOAA Small Boat Program and the NOAA Diving Program, the latter having as part of its mission the job of ensuring a level of diving skill conducive to safe and efficient operations in NOAA-sponsored underwater activities.

The Director of OMAO and the NOAA Corps is Rear Admiral David A. Score. Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Anita L. Lopez, NOAA, is the Director of the Marine and Aviation Operations Centers.

NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center (AOC), located at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, is home to NOAA's fleet of aircraft. The aircraft often operate over open ocean, mountains, coastal wetlands, Arctic pack ice, and in and around hurricanes and other severe weather. Specialized noncommercial aircraft support NOAA's atmospheric and hurricane surveillance/research programs, NOAA Hurricane Hunters. The aircraft collect the environmental and geographic data essential to NOAA hurricane and other weather and atmospheric research; provide aerial support for coastal and aeronautical charting and remote sensing projects; conduct aerial surveys for hydrologic research, and provide support to NOAA's fishery research and marine mammal assessment programs.

NOAA's ship fleet was created when various United States Government scientific agencies merged to form NOAA on 3 October 1970. At that time, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Bureau of Commercial Fisheries were abolished, and the ships that had constituted their fleets – the hydrographic survey ships of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the fisheries research ships of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries – combined to form the new NOAA fleet.

...
Wikipedia