The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has opened its rebuilt port facility in North Charleston, home to two of its Atlantic research ships.
Commerce Deputy Secretary Paul Dabbar and NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs cut the ribbon July 8, according to NOAA. The facility is home port for NOAA Ships Ronald H. Brown and Nancy Foster.
NOAA awarded Manson Construction Co. $59.8 million in 2023 to renovate the site. The work replaced the old pier with a 62-by-360-foot floating pier that supplies shoreside power to ships, plus a warehouse and a small boat pier, the agency said. NOAA called the floating pier one of the largest in the country. It was launched in Meggett in December 2025 and installed at NOAA’s port facility in February, according to NOAA’s fleet office.
Manson worked with Metal Trades Inc., a Keel company, according to NOAA’s fleet office, which marked a construction milestone on the pier in Hollywood, South Carolina, in April 2025. NOAA said then it expected the project to support about 700 jobs. The agency broke ground in July 2024, saying the project was partly funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Today, we cut the ribbon on an innovative, next-generation maritime home port,” Jacobs said in NOAA’s announcement.
Rear Adm. Chad M. Cary, director of the NOAA Corps, said the new infrastructure allows both ships based in Charleston to “once again have designated berths and better accommodate research missions in the area.”
NOAA’s Atlantic ships collect data used to protect marine mammals, coral reefs and historic shipwrecks, manage commercial fisheries and produce nautical charts. They also deploy and maintain buoys that gather ocean and weather data and warn of tsunamis. NOAA runs a fleet of 15 survey and research ships staffed by NOAA Corps officers and civilian mariners.
