About Us
Overview of the United States Coast Guard
The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the five armed forces of the United States and the only military organization within the Department of Homeland Security. The Coast Guard protects the maritime economy and the environment, defends our maritime borders, and saves those in peril.
In 2008, the Coast Guard...
Safety
- Responded to more than 24,000 search and rescue cases and saved more than 4,000 lives
- Conducted more than 70,000 commercial inspections of U.S flagged vessels
- Performed more than 12,000 safety and environmental examinations of foreign vessels entering U.S. ports
- Conducted nearly 4,700 marine casualty investigations
- Boarded nearly 3,700 underway fishing vessels to perform safety and compliance checks
- Saved almost $158 million in property
- Performed nearly 7,300 dockside safety examinations
- Enhanced the ability to detect and locate persons in distress through technology improvements that now cover more than 23,000 miles of the U.S. coastline
- Issued more than $122 million in state grants and $6.2 million in nonprofit grants for boating safety
- Issued nearly 84,000 credentials to qualified merchant mariners, who ensure the safe, secure, and efficient navigation of ships carrying 2.6 billion tons of commerce through our nation’s ports and waterways
Security
- Working with the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice as well as other partners, broke last year’s record by removing nearly 185 tons of cocaine bound toward the United States via the transit zone
- Interdicted nearly 5,000 undocumented migrants attempting to illegally enter the United States
- Deployed six patrol boats and 400 personnel to protect Iraq’s maritime oil infrastructure, train Iraqi naval forces, and enforce U.N. sanctions in the Arabian Gulf
- Conducted more than 1,500 security boardings of high interest vessels bound for the United States
- Provided waterside security and escorts for nearly 500 military freight conveyances, which provided supplies to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom
Stewardship
- Serviced nearly 42,000 aids-to-navigation (such as beacons and buoys) and corrected more than 10,000 discrepancies.
- Delivered the first U.S. aid (more than 30 tons of supplies) to the Republic of Georgia following the South Ossetia war
- Rescued citizens and helped restore the marine transportation system during and after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav
- Performed domestic icebreaking, keeping waterways open for commercial traffic and assisting 680 ice transits that carried more than $2 billion worth of cargo
- Performed nearly 17,000 facility safety inspections and 20,000 container inspections
- Conducted more than 5,600 fisheries conservation boardings
- Investigated almost 4,000 pollution incidents
Publications
- Coast Guard Snapshot
(updated May 2010) - Publication 1 - U.S. Coast Guard: America's Maritime Guardian
- USCG Posture Statement and Fiscal Year 2009 Performance Report (with 2011 Budget in Brief)
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Last Modified 11/8/2010