USCGC Maria Bray (WLM-562) is a Keeper-class coastal buoy tender of the United States Coast Guard.

Her primary mission is maintaining over 300 aids to navigation from Georgetown, South Carolina to Fort Pierce, Florida.

[3] The Coast Guard exercised options for the final four ships, including Maria Bray, in September 1997.

Maria Bray, as all Keeper-class ships, has a strengthened "ice belt" along the waterline so that she can work on aids to navigation in ice-infested waters.

Higher grades of steel were used for hull plating in the ice belt to prevent cracking in cold temperatures.

Her husband, Alexander Bray, was the principal keeper of the two Thatcher Island lighthouses at Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

Mr. Bray and the other assistant loaded their ailing colleague into a boat and sailed to the mainland for a doctor, expecting that they would make a quick return.

Maria, assisted by her nephew, was able to keep both lights burning through the next three days, carrying gallons of lantern fuel through the winds and snow drifts and up the 150 steps in each tower.

The ship helped repair damaged buoys and to relocate those had had been moved from their charted positions large waves so that maritime commerce could safely recommence.

[22] The bulk of Maria Bray's year is spent at sea tending its buoys, or in port maintaining the ship.

USCGC Eagle lost its 3,800 pounds (1,700 kg) anchor in the St. Johns River as it departed the "Sail Jacksonville" festival in June 2004.

[23] On 16 July 2014 the casino ship Escapade went aground off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia with 123 people aboard.

At roughly the same time, the ship also searched for two teenaged boys whose capsized fishing boat was found offshore in the same area.

[25][26][27] In March 2008, Maria Bray exercised with the Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System used for oil spill recovery.

[29] In September 2012 Maria Bray was diverted from her buoy tending work to assist other Coast Guard units in Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations.

[1] The Coast Guard provides maritime security for launches from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.