FY26 Marine Turtle Conservation for Sustainable U.S. Fisheries Grant Program

NOAA/NMFS is soliciting competitive proposals for grants and cooperative agreements for projects that will support NOAA’s mission for stewardship of living marine resources and the sustainable management of U.S. commercial longline fisheries. Projects will ensure data pipelines are in place to inform the sustainable management of U.S. commercial fisheries that interact with endangered species as they migrate throughout the Pacific — a problem that has led to fishery closures when annual interaction limits are reached. Through these efforts, NOAA will strengthen the competitiveness of U.S. commercial longline fisheries, creating a more level playing field for American fishermen, while reinforcing U.S. leadership in marine resource management. Projects must benefit aggregations of endangered marine turtles that have documented linkages to the Pacific Islands Region (PIR), are impacted by PIR federally managed commercial fisheries, and address NOAA’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) recovery obligations. For the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 funding competition, we are soliciting projects that: 1) monitor and implement protection measures to conserve western Pacific leatherback sea turtles occurring in the Coral Triangle region (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, or Solomon Islands); 2) monitor and implement protection measures to conserve North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles in Japan; and 3) progress conservation momentum and build capacity for research, monitoring and protection of endangered marine turtle populations in order to benefit U.S. trust resources that occur in international waters.