More than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by the oceans and seas, creating a flood of both opportunity and challenges in the maritime domain. Our nation and its allies face a growing array of threats from the sea that could disrupt maritime commerce, endanger coastal population centers, and damage critical infrastructure. With its coastal research facilities, cutting-edge technology and testbeds, long-standing global partnerships, and maritime expertise, PNNL is bolstering maritime security.

At home in the heart of Washington State’s Puget Sound, PNNL is uniquely positioned to leverage the strong ocean science backbone already available on the West Coast and Alaska to develop new engineering solutions to solve long-term challenges and protect ports and critical infrastructure.

Home to the Department of Energy’s only marine research facility, PNNL offers direct access to the coastal ocean, the busy shipping channel leading to the major ports of the Puget Sound Area, and U.S. Department of Defense facilities. PNNL-Sequim features more than 15,000 square feet of research laboratories, testbeds, research vessels, and divers offering the full breadth of maritime research capabilities at all scales.

PNNL maritime security and threat detection is a comprehensive approach. From the sea to the surface, PNNL’s autonomous research vessels and underwater sensors are exploring the maritime environment to detect changes, identify threats, and enable a resilient future. Researchers are developing novel measurement technologies for the coastal and marine environment to sense, detect, and measure minute changes to the operating environment. Measurement platforms and underwater permitted areas or testbeds allow them to evaluate realistic security scenarios.

PNNL also leads one of the nation’s only maritime preventive radiological and nuclear detection training programs. PNNL convenes regional federal, state, county, and local law enforcement and first responder agencies from across the Puget Sound area in drills to enable proper response and use of their radiological/nuclear detection equipment in a maritime environment. The training is designed to facilitate interagency coordination and maintain the regional capability to deter the illicit radioactive threats within, and potentially through, the Puget Sound maritime environment.

Together with regional collaborators, PNNL is tackling challenges in ocean energy harvesting, deploying underwater and surface autonomous vehicles for environmental sensing, and leveraging artificial intelligence to provide real-time monitoring of ocean processes, coastal environmental health, and persistent autonomous sensing. Integrated capabilities that span PNNL, the University of Washington, and the Navy Undersea Warfare Center are addressing the ever-increasing need to continuously assess ocean operations for threats to human and environmental health and security.