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.