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.
March 14, 2025 — Northern elephant seals weigh in at several thousand pounds and quickly put on more weight when catching squid, fish, and other prey. They feed off the California coast in the so-called “twilight zone” of the ocean (200 to 1,000 meters deep) where sunlight disappears. The ocean’s twilight zone holds most of the world’s fish, but is difficult to assess on a large scale.
However, elephant seals may help. Scientists have found that just as elephant seals gain substantial weight in good times, they gain little when prey are scarce.
A new research paper published in Science recognizes northern elephant seals as an “ecosystem sentinel” that can provide fishing fleets, fisheries managers, and others with low-cost but high-value insight into how the ocean is changing and why. The finding builds on two earlier research papers published last year that help scientists identify which species respond to changes quickly enough to make good sentinels. They also looked at how to assemble a series of sentinel species to inform decisions affecting the West Coast economy and the environment.
The research supports NOAA Fisheries’ mission of tracking and forecast ocean changes that affect commercial and recreational fishing. The insight helps fisheries managers make more timely decisions and accurate decisions about fishing seasons and levels. Ocean sentinels may help gather the data more quickly and at lower cost than research ships, for instance.
The scientists, led by Roxanne Beltran at University of California at Santa Cruz, examined four decades of data on California’s burgeoning northern elephant seal population. They compared those numbers with recorded changes in the ocean and found that even small differences in how much prey mother elephant seals consumed made big differences in their body mass and survival of their pups. They found that the connection was so strong that it helped the scientists hindcast the abundance of prey in the twilight zone as far as 5 decades into the past, and predict it 2 years into the future.
“In an ideal world, we would have daily mapping of phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance throughout the entire California Current,” says Elliott Hazen of NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. In a 2019 paper, Hazen proposed that marine top predators make effective ecosystem sentinels. “That way, we could see how the ecosystem is responding to various changes in real time. But we don’t. So we rely on predators, like the northern elephant seal, to tell us about larger ecosystem trends. Are they fatter or are they skinnier? This tells us whether there is enough prey, which is an indicator of ecosystem health.”
March 13, 2025 — Last winter, endangered Central California Coast coho salmon returned to Mendocino Coast rivers and streams in the highest numbers since monitoring began 16 years ago. The numbers suggest NOAA’s long-term investment to recover the species is paying off.
Local businesses are also reaping the rewards. Government funding for salmon habitat restoration employs foresters, construction workers, and other professionals to rehabilitate rivers and streams damaged by historic logging.
Recovering species to the point where they can be removed from the endangered species list takes a long time. NOAA has funded dozens of restoration projects benefiting Central California Coast coho salmon in Mendocino watersheds over the last 20 years. In an area decimated by a century’s worth of clearcutting and other harmful practices, there’s no shortage of restoration work to do.
“This funding is a big deal,” says Registered Professional Forester Chris Blencowe, who has consulted on restoration projects with NOAA partners The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Trout Unlimited (TU). “It’s diversifying the economy and directly supports good-paying local jobs with which you can support a family. I’m from this area, and without this work, I honestly don’t know what I’d be doing.”
The Office of Habitat Conservation’s most recent injection of $14.5 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in new river restoration projects has taken Mendocino’s restoration economy to new levels.
“We got a big boost here the last couple of years with the infrastructure funding,” says Brian Hurt, President of Wylatti Resource Management Inc. Wylatti is building projects on the Ten Mile River for TNC and at Dry Dock Gulch for TU with NOAA funding. “We used to have just one crew doing restoration work. This past year, at least three crews worked full time through the season.”
The success of the restoration work—and the restoration economy—owes a lot to better relationships between timber companies, landowners, restoration practitioners, and government agencies. Working together has improved the sustainability of working lands and the impact of restoration projects.
March 12, 2025 — Perusing the Federal Register — an old habit from my wire service days — I see that a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, will hold a four-day meeting to “consider actions affecting the Gulf of Mexico fisheries in the exclusive economic zone in early April.”
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 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.”
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.
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.”
March 10, 2025 — A federal judge has ordered NOAA to explain why it declined to adopt regulations to protect 20 coral species designated in 2014 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
In a 42-page decision, Judge Micah W.J. Smith of the District Court of Hawaii said NOAA Fisheries, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, failed to provide adequate explanation for denying a 2020 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to impose protective measures for the species that live Florida, the Caribbean, and the Indo-Pacific region and are threatened by the impacts of climate change.
“Even under [a] highly deferential standard of review, two facets of NMFS’ denial letter fall short,” Smith wrote. “NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to protect the threatened coral species from their gravest threat, climate change. And for one set of the threatened species, the Caribbean corals, NMFS offered no reasoned explanation for declining to adopt regulations addressing localized threats.”
March 10, 2025 — According to the NOAA California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment’s annual report, the California Current Ecosystem pulled out of a strong El Niño pattern in 2024. That El Niño delayed the onset of the annual spring upwelling of nutrient-laden water that, was nevertheless strong enough to fuel the rich West Coast ecosystem and improv environmental conditions for salmon.
NOAA Fisheries scientists presented the report to the Pacific Fishery Management Council to inform upcoming decisions on fishing seasons. The report provides a snapshot of ocean conditions, fish population abundance and habitat, and fisheries landings and fishing communities’ conditions. It gives short-term forecasts and longer term projections of how conditions across the ecosystem may evolve in 2025 and beyond.
“Each year we learn more about how this marine ecosystem functions and what we should be watching to anticipate change,” said Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center who coauthored the new report. “We’re getting better at forecasting what is coming at us, at the same time we see some new twists.”
March 8, 2025 — Researchers at Morgan State University’s Patuxent Environmental and Aquatic Research Laboratory quantified how restored oyster reefs in the NOAA Middle Peninsula Habitat Focus Area in Virginia would affect the local economy. They found that oyster reef restoration in the York and Piankatank rivers has a meaningful effect on the area’s economy. Results of their work, which was funded through the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Fisheries Research Program, were published in Ecological Modelling.
Oyster reefs provide habitat and food for commercially important species, including blue crabs. More healthy reef habitat means more blue crabs are available for harvest and for your dinner table. That provides financial benefits to watermen and supporting industries along the way.
In recent years, the York and Piankatank rivers have been the site of large-scale oyster reef restoration projects. That effort has led to 204 acres of restored oyster reefs in the York River and 497 acres in the Piankatank River. These projects have been spearheaded by members of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Virginia Oyster Restoration Workgroup, including:
These reefs support commercial and recreational fishing. But what would happen if there were more—or fewer—oyster reefs in the river? What other changes might affect the blue crab fishery?