[1] The ship was originally built as the United States Navy Cape Flattery-class torpedo trials craft Agate Pass (YTT 12) at McDermott Shipyards in Amelia, Louisiana, and launched in September 1990.

Upgrades include installing new, more powerful diesel generators & main propulsion engines, renewing major equipment and performing extensive preservation.

The ship supports scientific data collection through bottom fish trawling, sediment sampling, side-scan sonar and multi-beam surveying, sub-bottom profiling, core sampling, scientific diving with air and Nitrox, ROV operations, and servicing oceanographic/atmospheric surface and subsurface buoys.

The vessel employs state of the art navigation and propulsion systems resulting in high quality and efficient data collection.

In August 2009, a NOAA-led team aboard Nancy Foster found and photographed a wreck 20 nautical miles (37 km; 23 mi) off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and on 9 September 2009 the team's leader announced that the wreck had been identified as that of the U.S. Navy yard patrol boat USS YP-389, sunk during World War II by the German submarine U-701 on 19 June 1942.