Sea Grant Programs Only - FY2025 Aquaculture Legal, Regulatory, and Policy Grants

The following entities are eligible to submit to this opportunity: Sea Grant College Programs, Sea Grant Institutional Programs, and Sea Grant Coherent Area Programs. For the remainder of this document, these entities are collectively referred to as “Sea Grant Programs”. Programs are encouraged to partner with other Sea Grant Programs and/or other entities such as individuals, State and Tribal Agencies/Organizations, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), aquaculture industry members and associations, high schools, universities, and colleges, including community colleges. Federal agencies and their personnel are not permitted to receive federal funding under this competition; however, federal scientists and other employees can serve as uncompensated partners or co-Principal Investigators on applications. Federal labs and offices can also make available specialized expertise, facilities or equipment to applicants but cannot be compensated under this competition for their use, nor can the value of such assets be used as match.

All projects must take place within the United States or territories or their respective waterways.

Applicants must complete and maintain three registrations to be eligible to apply for or receive an award. These registrations include SAM.gov, Grants.gov, and eRA Commons. All registrations must be completed prior to the application being submitted. The complete registration process for all three systems can take 4 to 6 weeks, so applicants should begin this activity as soon as possible. If an eligible applicant does not have access to the internet, please contact the Agency Contacts listed in Section VII for submission instructions. NOAA has created a guide to aid applicants format application packages to eRA, linked here.

Prior to registering with eRA Commons, applicants must first obtain a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) from SAM.gov, if needed (refer to Section IV. Applications and Submission Information, Section C). Organizations can register with eRA Commons in tandem with completing their full SAM and Grants.gov registrations; however, all registrations must be in place by time of application submission. eRA Commons requires organizations to identify at least one Signing Official (SO) and at least one Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) account in order to submit an application.

This document sets out requirements for submitting to NOAA-OAR-SG-2025-29312.

Please note that a submission checklist to assist applicants in ensuring that they address components and elements of the NOFO is provided on the final page of this document.