National Sea Grant BIL Marine Debris Challenge Competition

The National Sea Grant BIL Marine Debris Challenge Competition sits under NOAA Sea Grant and was built as a one-off competition funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Sea Grant's broader mission is coastal and Great Lakes stewardship, and this track extends that mandate into marine debris prevention and removal. The competition was set at $16 million and was intended to support transformational research-to-application projects. The available fields point to U.S.-based eligibility across for-profit, nonprofit, university, and research organizations, with no individual applications and no match requirement. It is marked paused, and the underlying funding context makes it sensitive to federal budget and policy changes. The strongest fit is a team that can move from field research to deployment and can show a credible path from concept to practical debris reduction. Sea Grant frames the work around applied coastal problem-solving, so proposals should look operational, not theoretical. Because the opportunity is not recurring, the most relevant question is whether the project can be completed as a discrete national challenge rather than folded into a standing program.

No upcoming rounds verified. Cadence: One-off.