Hi everyone! I’m Allie, one of the three Knauss Fellows from Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. I was placed with the Ocean, Great Lakes, and Coastal Program (OGLCP) at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). It is sometimes surprising for folks to hear that I spent a year at DOI. In reality, as our office likes to say, Interior is a marine and coastal agency. It is, perhaps, most famous for our national parks; what many do not realize is that those parks and our national wildlife refuges are home to 3.6 million acres of coral reefs, all managed by DOI. Between those and our interests in fish, offshore resource management and surveying, among others, DOI has a significant stake in the marine and coastal environment.
One of my favorite facts from this year is that NOAA was originally meant to be a part of DOI but ended up in the Department of Commerce from an alleged feud between the president and his secretary at the time.
Because my mentors encouraged independence and our office worked across DOI’s marine interests, my work portfolio was quite broad. For example, shortly after I started, one of my colleagues asked if I was interested in sitting in on some meetings with the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. I said yes, and everyone welcomed me from day one.
One of my goals for the fellowship was to develop my writing skills by taking ownership of a project with a tangible product. Within a couple of months, I was working toward that goal, meeting with folks in Hawaii and Puerto Rico to develop one-pagers (single-page documents) to talk about the successes and needs of their watershed management programs. This was outside my area of expertise, and I really enjoyed learning about how we manage coral reefs and the basics of communications at the federal level.
I also served as an executive secretary for the National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization Council (NOMEC). Did you know that only about a quarter of the seafloor has been mapped? Even less has been explored and characterized, which would give us comprehensive information on everything else, from biology to chemistry, hydrologic features and archeology.
The NOMEC Council works toward the goal to map, explore and characterize U.S. waters – all vital information to better understand our planet (and support our economy, national security and enjoyment of our coasts). Surprisingly, this was one of my favorite parts of the fellowship, and I think it came down to the people. The people who work for the council and its working groups are some of the most dedicated people I’ve had the privilege to work with, and I hope to do so again soon.
One of my other favorite parts about my time at DOI was the Main Interior Building itself. That is one of the differences between working at NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, and for another agency: the buildings in downtown D.C. are older and look much more like what many might imagine a federal workplace looks like. It certainly made me feel important to see the Washington Monument on my commute.
If ever given the chance, I highly recommend swinging by for a murals tour. My favorites were the Ansel Adams murals. From 1941-1942, Ansel Adams was commissioned by then Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to photograph the majesty of the western part of the continent.
Those murals were not hung upon his return to the Capitol, and it took more than 60 years for them to be rediscovered in the stores of the Interior Museum and hung in the hallways. They, and their many counterparts, are worth the stop.
Overall, 2025 was a dynamic year. In addition to the usual commotion caused by a change in presidential administration, our fellowship class also dealt with turnover of our federal colleagues, weather that I was repeatedly assured was “not typical” for D.C. and the longest lapse in federal appropriations in U.S. history. We found ways to stay motivated through it all, and I was repeatedly amazed by how resilient our class is.
We cannot count the number of ways that NOAA Sea Grant and our federal agencies impact our daily lives. From our weather data to clean waterways, working waterfronts and fisheries, we owe so much to the folks working to ensure our safety and access to the environment.
I am grateful to the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium and the Knauss Fellowship team for their continued support of the program, and I feel so lucky to have gotten to know so many great people over the past year. I hope I get to work with them again someday soon!
(Allie earned a Ph.D. in marine sciences in 2025 from the University of South Alabama and Dauphin Island Sea Lab, where she developed an extensive research portfolio focused on the sulfur cycle.)