Sea Grant Department Offering Grants for Aquaculture Legal, Regulatory, and Policy Research

To be eligible to apply or receive an award, applicants  must complete and maintain three registrations; SAM.gov, Grants.gov, and eRA Commons. For each, the complete registration process can take 4 to 6 weeks, so applicants should begin this activity as soon as possible and well before the proposal due date. For more information on how to meet these registration and application submission requirements without errors, we advise all to carefully review relevant Applicant and Grantee Training modules: https://www.commerce.gov/ocio/programs/gems/applicant-and-grantee-training. Additionally, we advise that all carefully read ‘Additional Application Package Forms’ within the ‘Full Proposal Required Elements’ section below.

The National Sea Grant College Program champions diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by recruiting, retaining, and preparing a diverse workforce, and proactively engaging and serving the diverse populations of coastal communities. Sea Grant is committed to building inclusive research, extension, communication, and education programs that serve people with unique backgrounds, circumstances, needs, perspectives, and ways of thinking. We encourage Sea Grant program applications to reflect diverse participation with regards to age, race, ethnicities, national origins, gender identities, sexual orientations, disabilities, cultures, religions, citizenship types, marital statuses, education levels, job classifications, veteran status types, income, and socioeconomic status.

The National Sea Grant College Program was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1966 (amended in 2020, Public Law 116-221) to support leveraged federal and state partnerships that harness the intellectual capacity of the nation’s universities and research institutions to solve problems and generate opportunities in coastal communities.

Subject to the availability of funding, Sea Grant anticipates that approximately $500,000 will be available to support broad, non-proprietary research projects for a period of up to three years with the goal of addressing legal, regulatory, and policy topics relevant to U.S. coastal, marine, and Great Lakes aquaculture communities. Federal funds ranging from $100,000-$250,000 may be requested per application. Successful proposals will address topical needs (described below) and preferably include participation and involvement of Sea Grant extension personnel and members of the aquaculture community, including state regulators/resource managers. These investments are consistent with Sea Grant’s focus area of Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture (SFA) and the Sea Grant Network’s 10-year Aquaculture Vision, both of which support NOAA and Department of Commerce aquaculture goals.

The following entities are eligible to submit to this opportunity: Sea Grant College Programs, Sea Grant Institutional Programs, and Sea Grant Coherent Area Programs. For the remainder of this document, these entities are collectively referred to as “Sea Grant Programs”. Programs are encouraged to partner with other Sea Grant Programs and/or other entities such as individuals, State and Tribal Agencies/Organizations, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), aquaculture industry members and associations, high schools, universities, and colleges, including community colleges. Federal agencies and their personnel are not permitted to receive federal funding under this competition; however, federal scientists and other employees can serve as uncompensated partners or co-Principal Investigators on applications. Federal labs and offices can also make available specialized expertise, facilities or equipment to applicants but cannot be compensated under this competition for their use, nor can the value of such assets be used as match.

All projects must take place within the United States or territories or their respective waterways.

Applicants must complete and maintain three registrations to be eligible to apply for or receive an award. These registrations include SAM.gov, Grants.gov, and eRA Commons. All registrations must be completed prior to the application being submitted. The complete registration process for all three systems can take 4 to 6 weeks, so applicants should begin this activity as soon as possible. If an eligible applicant does not have access to the internet, please contact the Agency Contacts listed in Section VII for submission instructions. NOAA has created a guide to aid applicants format application packages to eRA, linked here.

Prior to registering with eRA Commons, applicants must first obtain a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) from SAM.gov, if needed (refer to Section IV. Applications and Submission Information, Section C). Organizations can register with eRA Commons in tandem with completing their full SAM and Grants.gov registrations; however, all registrations must be in place by time of application submission. eRA Commons requires organizations to identify at least one Signing Official (SO) and at least one Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) account in order to submit an application.

This document sets out requirements for submitting to NOAA-OAR-SG-2025-29312.

Please note that a submission checklist to assist applicants in ensuring that they address components and elements of the NOFO is provided on the final page of this document.