Saving Seafood

Fishermen want to go green but say DOGE cuts prevent that

March 19, 2025 — Commercial fishermen and seafood processors and distributors looking to switch to new, lower-carbon emission systems say the federal funding they relied on for this work is either frozen or unavailable due to significant budget cuts promoted by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The changes are designed to replace old diesel-burning engines and outdated at-sea cooling systems and are touted by environmentalists as a way to reduce seafood’s carbon footprint. Salmon harvesters in Washington state, scallop distributors in Maine and halibut fishermen in Alaska are among those who told The Associated Press their federal commitments for projects like new boat engines and refrigeration systems have been rescinded or are under review.

“The uncertainty. This is not a business-friendly environment,” said Togue Brawn, a Maine seafood distributor who said she is out tens of thousands of dollars. “If they want to make America great again, then honor your word and tell people what’s going on.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Judges order US agencies – including NOAA – to rehire federal workers

March 17, 2025 — A pair of judges have ordered the U.S. government to rehire thousands of laid off workers, frustrating U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to quickly and drastically shrink the federal workforce.

The Trump administration has prioritized slashing the federal workforce, first offering employees financial incentives to join a deferred resignation plan and then implementing mass layoffs of probationary employees. More than 20,000 employees have been laid off to date.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

DOGE Considering Canceling some NOAA Building Leases

March 11, 2025 — Late last month, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, mandated that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration get rid of 31 of its rental offices and facilities, including three in New England, The Public’s Radio has learned.

Former NOAA scientists say they especially fear the ramifications of losing a building on the list in East Falmouth, Mass., which has long housed the entire Northeast Coast’s fisheries observer program and is tasked with tracking the number and habits of fish from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Gulf of Maine, and helping ensure fishers are not catching too many fish or illegal species.

Several workers from that program were already terminated in mass firings on Feb. 27, and scientists say losing the East Falmouth building would cause further disruptions, potentially resulting in massive declines in fish populations in the region and declines in enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full article at the Northern Journal

ALASKA: Science supporting Alaska seafood industry threatened by federal firings, biologists and fishermen say

March 11, 2025 — Rebecca Howard is a marine biologist who spent six years in graduate school — largely funded by federal scholarship dollars — to earn a doctorate at Oregon State University. Last April, she was hired by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries branch to join in annual surveys off Alaska that gather data vital to the management of the nation’s biggest seafood harvests.

This year, the Seattle-based Howard was scheduled to spend three weeks aboard a chartered fishing boat sampling Gulf of Alaska marine life, and another three weeks on a Bering Sea survey. But on Feb. 27, more than 10 months into a yearlong probation, she received an email from a NOAA vice admiral informing her that she was being terminated. Her ability, knowledge “and/or skills” no longer fit the agency’s needs.

“This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay at this job,” Howard said in an interview from Seattle, where she worked at the main branch of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “It was a huge disappointment.”

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Local Marine Research Takes a Hit, Following Federal Firing Edict

March 6, 2025 — The mass firing of probationary employees at federal agencies and other cuts by the Trump administration reached the epicenter of marine research for the Cape and Islands last week, leaving Vineyarders wondering about the potential ripple effects in the coming years.

Several scientists in Woods Hole were terminated Feb. 27, part of the Elon Musk-led layoffs by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to former employees and other scientific leaders in the seaside community.

The firings, expected budget cuts and disbanding of diversity initiatives, both in Woods Hole and beyond, have cast a pall of fear and anger over the scientific community.

“The body of knowledge and expertise that these agencies hold, and the staff within them, is immense, whether it’s their laboratory that we are able to access or their field expertise,” said Emily Reddington, the executive director of the Great Pond Foundation here on the Island. “We couldn’t do our work to help protect the ponds without them.”

Read the full article at the Vineyard Gazzette

ALASKA: NOAA workers fired in Juneau as part of national purge

March 4, 2025 — More federal workers were fired in Alaska Thursday, this time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

Agency staff could not confirm how many people were fired from NOAA offices in the Juneau area.

Aaron Lambert, a fisheries management specialist, says he was one of at least four people who cleared out their desks at NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office in the Federal Building downtown.

Lambert says he saw it coming – he was a ‘probationary employee’ who was with the agency for six months. But that didn’t buoy the “sinking feeling” when he received the email at 11:35 a.m. Thursday officially firing him because his “ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” according to the email.

Read the full article at KTOO

Rhode Island’s ‘Squid Squad’ Targeted in DOGE Purge of NOAA

March 4, 2025 — The head of squid research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Narragansett Bay facility is among the hundreds of agency employees nationwide who are no longer on the job, according to one of NOAA’s former administrators.

Former National Marine Fisheries Service Administrator Janet Coit said Monday that about 20 employees from NOAA’s Rhode Island office and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts were recently dismissed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Coit shared the revelation during a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) at Save the Bay’s headquarters near the Port of Providence.

Coit, who directed the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) from 2011 to 2021, called the firings “sudden, irrational and indiscriminate.”

“The circumstances are dire,” she said. “The impact will be felt in a cascading and ripple effect across many different coastal communities.”

NOAA began firing employees on Feb. 27 as part of the latest wave of cuts from DOGE to shrink the federal workforce. NOAA employs some 12,000 people nationally — 94 of whom work in Rhode Island, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Read the full article at Rhode Island PBS

Experts and Lawmakers Sound Alarms Over Impacts of NOAA Cuts on Fisheries

March 4, 2025 — After several hundred employees were fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week as part of DOGE’s workforce cuts, reporting has focused on how those cuts might threaten critical weather modeling and systems that help predict and warn the public about severe weather events such as hurricanes and tsunamis.

In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that “per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.” But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

Read the full article at Civil Eats

RHODE ISLAND: Magaziner states NOAA Cuts ‘a direct attack on the Ocean State’

March 4, 2025 — Sharp cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will hurt Rhode Island’s economy and imperil its commercial fisheries, said U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner.

The White House on Thursday cut around 800 people from the NOAA payroll, and intends to eliminate 30% to 50% of the agency’s staff, said Magaziner, who hosted a panel discussion in Providence to “sound the alarm.”

“As the Ocean State, it is a direct attack on our character and our quality of life,” Magaziner said. “And we need to fight back.”

Read the full article at Providence Business First

NOAA cuts come to Narragansett Bay and Woods Hole facilities

March 4, 2025 — Multiple employees for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working in the agency’s Woods Hole and Narragansett Bay facilities had their positions eliminated by the agency on Thursday, according to 10 current and former employees of those labs and offices. The employees affected worked across the agency, including several in facilities and fisheries management.

The cuts affected people in their probationary periods of employment, which last one to two years at the agency. NOAA would not confirm the number of people whose jobs were cut at the two facilities, but several employees from Woods Hole said that branch provided the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with a list of 23 names of probationary employees back in January. National news outlets like CBS and The New York Times have estimated the number of employees affected across the country is in the hundreds.

Sarah Cierpich was among the employees terminated from one of the campuses in Woods Hole after working for the agency for 19 years – first as a contractor, and then, since September 9 of last year, as a federal employee. She said she had called out sick yesterday, fell asleep, and then woke up to the bad news.

“I woke up to my boss calling me, saying, ‘Can you check your email?’” she said.

The termination email that came from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, the new undersecretary of NOAA, made Cierpich feel “disrespected and disgusted,” she said.

Read the full article at CAI