Applicants for Saltonstall-Kennedy grants could hear within the next week if their projects will receive any portion of the estimated $5 million to $11 million expected to be doled out by NOAA in this year’s disbursement.

Daniel Namur, NOAA’s Maryland-based program director for the Saltonstall-Kennedy grants, said yesterday that review panels have hit the home stretch of the merit review process for the 261 applications, including 123 from the Northeast region and a half-dozen from Gloucester.

“They’re wrapping up the merit review process as we speak,” Namur said. “The process has been complicated by the fact that there were so many applicants, but we could finalize everything within the next week.”

Namur declined to say what amount ultimately will be dispersed after the review process, which was delayed by more than a month by the partial shutdown of the federal government in October.

The program, designed to fund private and public-private research and development projects that benefit the U.S. fishing industry, is funded from money generated from tariffs paid on foreign seafood imported into the United States.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times>>