March 11, 2025 — Editor’s note: The Washington bureaucracy referred to in this article was likely an automatic review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) which is a statutory part of the Office of Management and Budget within the Executive Office of the President. That review was triggered automatically due to the size of the quota reduction agreed to by the New England Fishery Management Council with the support of the limited access Atlantic scallop fishery in order to maintain the health and sustainability of the fishery.  That review requirement was addressed in Washington on Monday, and the process is now back on track, and proceeding as it does in most years, with the next step being publication in the Federal Register.  Unless there is a Government shutdown, the process should be complete by early to mid-April, which although past the April 1 target, is no more unusual that most years.

Federal cuts ordered by the Trump administration reached Massachusetts in late February, when the NOAA Fisheries’ workforce from Maine to North Carolina was slashed.

Hundreds more cuts may happen this week, when department heads must meet a deadline to submit proposals for “large-scale” reductions in force at their respective agencies to not only terminate people, but eliminate their positions altogether.

This means more scientists and analysts who protect and manage the country’s commercial fisheries may soon lose their jobs. Their terminations have raised concerns about the future of the fishing industry, the science that underlies its management, and the people who rely on it for work and for food. That’s especially true in New Bedford, the country’s highest-value fishing port, where the new scallop season is about to start.

NOAA Fisheries terminations: what we know

NOAA Fisheries is the federal steward of the oceans and their resources, including endangered marine mammals. With science as its foundation and guide, it manages more than 400 fish stocks.

NOAA Fisheries’ parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which hosts the critically important National Weather Service, has seen about 1,300 terminations already, per the New York Times. Another 10% could be cut in this next round, one source told The Light.

The agency and the Office of Personnel Management did not answer questions from The Light on how many people were terminated in Massachusetts (or nationally) in February, and what their positions were.

During a conference hosted by U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Janet Coit, the assistant administrator at NOAA Fisheries who resigned in January, said at least 20 employees in NOAA Fisheries’ Rhode Island and Woods Hole offices were terminated.

She called the terminations of “some of the best and the brightest” indiscriminate and not strategic, saying the Trump administration used a loophole to fire long-term employees with institutional knowledge, who were technically probationary because they had received a promotion or assumed a new position.

Some probationary members who were terminated had worked for the agency for many years as contract workers, and had only recently been onboarded as federal employees.

Terminations included the head of NOAA’s marine carbon dioxide removal office and the director of NOAA’s ocean acidification program, both of which research issues critical to the fishing industry and its future viability.

The Trump administration’s cuts also have extended to advisory committees, including one established in 1971: the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee. It was staffed by representatives from universities, the commercial fishing industry, environmental nonprofits and seafood companies.

Sarah Schumann, a commercial fisherman in Rhode Island who was serving her third year as a committee member, said it was an excellent venue for fishermen to have their interests and concerns heard by the higher levels of government on how fisheries can be better managed.

“We’ve been robbed of a voice,” she said. “It felt like a real place to collaboratively, honestly evaluate the larger scale trajectory of fisheries management in the U.S. And now that that’s gone.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light