The NOAA Corps has and always will have infuential allies in the halls of congress. Their Officer assiciation if they have one I’m sure spreads plenty of cash and influence. Incredible how powerful this small officer group is.
If there ever is a nuclear war the only species to survive will be the hearty cockroaches and the NOAA Corps.
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The engine room was all civilians, many out of the union halls. I could have stayed, but I was stuck in a billet I didn’t want, and facing a long yard period.
The deck ratings were civilians, some out of the hall, too.
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Maybe you have figured out by now, after reading some relevant responses, that NOAA is a quasi Navy. They require the commissioned officers to run the operation mainly for the science and they cannot easily quit if they get p.o. by the cook or some other silly reason. They can pull their duty rotation onboard and then the next rotation is back to science, fulfilling the mission of NOAA. Many of this group are pilots as well. When I put my time in there many years ago, many of the officers were very competent and functioned as any licensed mate would. Unfortunately many were terribly incompetent and were a hazard to navigation every time their watch began. Compared to other government agencies, I would rate NOAA as more efficient than, say the Corps of Engineers. This is probably due to its smaller scale and focused mission. NOAA is responsible for many products that are truly beneficial to an average American (weather forecasting, hurricane warnings, tidal data, etc.) This is not the case for many other elements of the government. I would agree that having two Admirals at the top is uncalled for. But at the end of the day I would rather have NOAA around, the way it is, than most other government agencies.
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They still are hiring from the halls?
I remember when that method started. Is ASM still the contractor?
This was proposed to MSC as a way to aliviate the manning issues but msc/us navy said no as this was admission they could not crew their ships.
Reliefs from the halls.
Sounds like they use the Kings Point recipe. Or is it the other way around?
No one is saying NOAA shouldn’t be around. More that the NOAA Corp officers should be focused on their science rather than spending time training to navigate ships and then doing a deck officer job. Seems like a waste of resources spending time to train scientists to do a job rather than put them to work in a scientific capacity that they already have the education for.
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The short answer is that NOAA Corps Officers are cheaper than licensed deck officers in the long run, and therefore better for taxpayers. The longer answer is in my points below.
Some things I saw in the comments I might be able to clear up:
-Deck crew can not hawspipe to NOAA Corps Officers. They would have to go through the same application process/Basic Officer Training Class as the rest of the Corps. There are a very small group (three the last I heard) of USCG licensed mates that hawspiped up and rotate onto ships to train officers (mainly on trawling) and fill in if a Corps Officer needs to take a trip off.
-Occasionally NOAA Ships will bring on crew from the union halls. Mainly when there are not enough NOAA Professional Mariners available to round out the crew of a ship.
-WWII was the last war that NOAA Corps Officers were heavily involved in a war. NOAA Ships occasionally get called to perform diplomatic functions where a warship would not be appropriate. The most recent I am aware of is May 8, 2016 when the Nancy Foster was the first US Government ship to make a port call in Cuba.
-NOAA Corps Officers are assigned two years on a ship, and then three years on a “land” assignment. During the sea assignment, many officers sail 200 days/year. The land assignment is a position in any of the NOAA line offices, such as the National Marine Fisheries Service. A lot of positions involve managing or operating fleets of small boats and divers, designing and working with AUVs and UAVs, or a position that might require strange hours or living conditions, such as maintaining science equipment in Antarctica over the winter. The main purpose of the land assignment is to give the officer a break from sailing while allowing them to work closely with scientists that might end up on a NOAA Ship.
-NOAA Ships do a lot of strange maneuvering that is not typical of a merchant ship. Some examples include holding station for hours without DP while instruments are lowered thousands of meters, deploying/recovering large weather buoys, trawling, towing plankton nets, running survey lines, ect. While I am confident that any USCG Licensed Officer could learn these operations, the “rice bowl” provides a lot of continuity and ensures that officers are trained on these ops early in their career.
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I will advance that position to another way point for consideration. How about we eliminate the Coast Guard oversight of Merchant Mariners? The Coast Guard does not perform the mission that we accomplish everyday, 24/7. They don’t have the equipment, the qualified personnel, or the expertise to do so. Merchant Mariners do not perform the Coast Guard mission either and for the same reasons. So why are we governed by a military entity and subjected to its administrative judges, hearings, and penalties? Wouldn’t Merchant Mariners be better served by an administration operated by Merchant Mariners? Wouldn’t the Nation be better served as well?
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I don’t think it was a passport related issue. If his passport was held illegaly the person(s) should have been immediately fired. It sounds like the mariner exhausted all the avenues to leaving with the ship and main office and had enough. There were a few masters/dept heads that had a “body-for-body” mantra. They didn’t give a rats behind about you.
Unless there have been changes or updates to the MOU between uscg and msc CIVMARS do not sign articles. Commercial world if you break articles, not good. Worse if foreign articles. Walk-offs were never reported to uscg unless part of new world order.
Good idea. Follow the FAA license model. Imagine in the Air Force issued pilot licenses?!?
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If the USCG stopped overseeing merchant mariners, half of the nepo-baby pilots in this country would be out of jobs, because they couldn’t pass a test given by a competent org.
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OSVs do a lot of “Strange maneuvering” also without DP such as backing under a stationary steel platform in high seas, something that would cause the average non USCG licensed NOAA officer to crap their pants
“While I am confident that any USCG Licensed Officer could learn these operations, the “rice bowl” provides a lot of continuity and ensures that officers are trained on these ops early in their career.”
That is funny to anyone that has worked with or seen NOAA people in operation. There are some that are competent but most aren’t qualified or capable of passing the simple USCG exam as a deck officer, therefore they don’t. There is also a good reason NOAA Corps are not engineers, lack of ability and training as well as the fact that engineers on occasion get dirty. 
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Another good point. Every FAA licensed pilot has to past a practical test in which he actually flies a plane with an examiner.
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An FAA license applicant can be tested on every aspect of his practical knowledge from within a few hours to less than a full day depending on the level of license or rating he is testing for.
How do you scale this to maritime licensing?
well, there is a bit of ‘special’ preference in the selection process. You’d have to spend a few years there to see it and I ain’t talking a “good ole boy network” in the ‘traditional’ sense.
Excellent question. On top of that, they are running small research vessels that do very little but they get all of the rank, pay and benefits of Naval officers. Civilian mariners are vastly cheaper (in total compensation) than NOAA corps officers - but if you were a senior NOAA corps officer, who you want to hire deck officer more qualified than their superiors? Would you want to reduce the standing NOAA corps officer ranks with civilians - even if the civilians were cheaper and better?
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NOAA Corps is a boondoggle and a waste. I have never seen a reasonable explanation for their existence. Even they cannot explain why their maritime job cannot be performed by civilian mariners.
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During the Obama Administration, government contractors were asked about ways to reduce military costs - since Obama had done some reading and saw that military contractors are 1/10th the cost of active duty personnel. It was recommended that civilian mariners replace the NOAA corps officers and man USCG patrol boats (while keeping one Coast Guardsman on board). Hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved. The Pentagon quickly buried it. By the way, Canada, and some other countries have civilians operating their Coast Guard vessels. Me? I would love to be a Coast Guardsman assigned to a 40’er based in Newport, RI that rarely gets underway and collect all those military benni’s.
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I’ve been working with NOAA officers for a while. The are incompetent.
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