Saving Seafood

MAINE: NOAA cuts raise concerns among fishermen

March 5, 2025 —  Over 2,000 people from across New England convened at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum over the weekend to talk all things fish.

But this year, between gear expos, panels, and buddies catching up, there was an undercurrent of uncertainty after news broke of hundreds of NOAA layoffs in the weather and fish management divisions.

At a panel on managing fish in Gulf of Maine waters, one NOAA speaker was absent, and the other declined to answer questions about how changes at the federal agency might impact local fishing.

Eric Hesse fishes for tuna far off the coast of Cape Cod. He drove up for a panel on the Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey, which he participates in.

“We’re worried about the impact of it. We engage with NOAA on various levels, whether it’s reporting, observer coverage,” he said. “All these things are part of our daily life, on the water, and to suddenly lose part of that could really disrupt our fisheries.”

Read the full article at Maine Public 

Endangered California Coho Salmon Experience Record-Breaking Spawning Season on Mendocino Coast

March 5, 2025 — Last winter, endangered Central California Coast coho salmon (CCC coho) returned to Mendocino Coast rivers and streams in the highest numbers since monitoring began 16 years ago. Monitoring led by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to track their population status estimated more than 15,000 adult CCC coho returned to spawn during the 2023–24 season. The Ten Mile and Noyo rivers exceeded recovery targets set by NOAA for delisting CCC coho under the Endangered Species Act, and the Big and Garcia rivers experienced record returns.

While the overall numbers remain low compared to the species’ past abundance, NOAA scientists are excited by the results.

“I remember in the 1990s monitoring streams where water temperatures were too hot for CCC coho and lacking in structure, and I thought they would never come back in my lifetime,” says NOAA San Joaquin River Branch Chief Jonathan Ambrose. “I’ve been at NOAA Fisheries for 25 years, and we’ve changed the trajectory for CCC coho salmon. A lot of people think it’s too late—it’s too hard to bring back endangered species. This is a prime example of why it’s not too late or too hard.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

Fishery managers worry about effects of NOAA cuts

March 4, 2025 — The long term impacts of recent staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are still unknown, but fishery managers on the West Coast called the situation troubling.

On Thursday, NOAA laid off more than 800 workers as the Trump administration continues its push to reduce the federal workforce.

West Coast lawmakers have warned that the cuts — and the potential for more layoffs in the future — could endanger lives and threaten maritime commerce and the fishing industry. NOAA manages federal tribal, commercial and recreational fisheries and includes the National Weather Service, which provides weather forecast data.

For West Coast fisheries, the firings have created uncertainty for fishery management now.

This week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, a quasi-governmental body that recommends management measures for a number of fisheries on the West Coast, will meet to begin — among other things — the process of setting summer and fall salmon fisheries.

Read the full article at KMUN

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

MAINE: Of the nearly three dozen Sea Grant programs, Maine’s seems to be the only one cut

March 4, 2025 — Maine appears to be the only state whose federal grant boosting research and economic development for coastal communities was terminated.

The University of Maine said it was notified late Friday that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was immediately discontinuing funding for the $4.5 million Maine Sea Grant, said university spokesperson Samantha Warren.

The grant has helped finance statewide research, strengthened coastal communities, and supported thousands of jobs over more than five decades. However, the letter from NOAA said the grant’s work is “no longer relevant to the focus of the Administration’s priorities and program objectives.”

Maine’s Sea Grant program is one of 34 across coastal and Great Lakes states throughout the country. As of mid-Monday, the New Hampshire Sea Grant had not received a similar notice, said Director Erik Chapman. Similarly, Fiscal Officer Caroline Johnston was not aware of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant receiving a notification about funding cuts.

Both Chapman and Warren said they were unaware of any program’s termination beyond Maine.

Pointing out that there is little information about the reasoning behind the cut, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree argued in a statement that the decision shows President Donald Trump has a “personal vendetta against our state.” The funding cut came about a week after Trump threatened Gov. Janet Mills after a heated exchange over the state not complying with an executive order barring transgender students from competing in women’s athletics.

Read the full article at The Laconia Daily Sun

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

NOAA terminates space, climate and marine life advisory committees

March 4, 2025 — The Trump administration is disbanding expert advisory committees focused on space, climate, coastal area management and marine fisheries after the agency they were designed to assist said they are no longer necessary.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is ending the committees because they “have served their purpose and should be terminated,” Nancy Hann, the agency’s deputy undersecretary for operations, said in a memorandum obtained by Government Executive.  The terminations follow an executive order from President Trump requiring agencies to do away with any federal advisory committees not required by law.

The impacted committees are the:

  • Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space
  • Climate Services Advisory Committee
  • Marine and Coastal Area-based Management Advisory Committee
  • Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee

The Commerce Department’s Office of Privacy and Open Government, which manages all of the federal advisory committees within Commerce, will work with the committees to ensure “an orderly termination,” Hann added.

Read the full article at Government Executive 

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