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Marsh Madness 2022

March 28, 2022

While the women and men duel it out in their basketball tournaments, this week we’re keeping score of all the ways marsh habitat plays an important role in the protection and restoration work we do for communities, fish, and wildlife.

Gulf saltmarsh

From March 28–April 4, NOAA is taking a court-side look at how we protect and restore marsh habitat to sustain fisheries, recover protected species, and maintain resilient coastal ecosystems and communities. Follow #MarshMadness on @NOAAHabitat!

Marsh Habitat Features

More Habitat, More Fish: New Tool to Estimate Fish Production Within Nursery Habitats

Salt marshes are important nursery habitats for young fish to grow. A new interactive tool can help us estimate how many fish and invertebrates are produced within these habitats in the Gulf of Mexico.

Learn more about the tool and an example of how many fish are produced in Pensacola Bay, Florida

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Salt Marsh in Texas
Salt Marsh in Texas. Credit: Pedro Brandao

5 Lovely Reasons Why We "Heart" Estuaries

Estuaries, where rivers meet the sea—have marshes, mangroves, swamps, deltas, and floodplains—that all provide valuable benefits to fish, protected species, and communities. 

Read more about why we love them and how we work to conserve, protect, and restore them

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Dike Trail of the Mendenhall Wetlands in Juneau, Alaska.

Protecting Coastal Blue Carbon Through Habitat Conservation

By absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, coastal habitats (like marshes) play an important role in protecting the climate. 

Learn the basics about coastal blue carbon and what NOAA Fisheries is doing to protect coastal blue carbon habitats

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A salt marsh
Coastal marshes at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland. Credit: Jeffrey Brainard

What’s Wild in Our Wetlands?

Marshes and swamps are two kinds of wetlands that look like land but are sometimes so wet that fish live in many of them. As a matter of fact, many fish couldn’t survive without wetlands!

Explore our interactive map to find out what kind of fish might be in your local wetland

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Great blue heron eating fish in salt marsh.
Great blue heron eating a fish in a salt marsh.

Interview with a Habitat: Wetland

During a recent Habitat Month, we interviewed different types of habitats and asked about the ways they provide numerous benefits to communities and our economy.

Pull on your waterproof boots and hop in an airboat to join NOAA as we wade into Louisiana’s coastal wetlands for an interview

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Coastal wetlands in the Barataria Basin of the Gulf of Mexico.

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The Value of Coastal Wetland Habitat

Nearly 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands are lost in the United States each year to development, draining, erosion, and sinkage. That’s close to 70 basketball courts every hour.

See the results of our efforts to protect and restore wetland habitats

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Last updated by Office of Habitat Conservation on March 31, 2022

Wetlands