April 15, 2025 — Owen Liu was hired to help solve a mystery.

Fishers had been plying the Pacific Ocean in search of hake, a species making up one of the most lucrative fisheries on the West Coast.

But the catch hadn’t met expectations for a decade, Liu said.

Liu was tapped last year to unravel the conundrum. He was developing a tool to help understand Pacific hake distribution — before being fired by the Trump administration along with more than 600 other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration probationary employees.

Since then, Liu and his fired colleagues have been caught up in political turmoil, which has landed in federal court and led to rehirings and refirings as recently as last week.

In interviews with The Seattle Times, some of these Western Washington NOAA fisheries scientists described feeling like they’d been in “limbo” or “purgatory” and expressed a desire to get back to work.

Nineteen probationary employees who worked at the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Science centers have been among those hanging in the balance, according to Nick Tolimieri, a union representative for local NOAA employees. There are about 400 people in the bargaining unit across the science centers, Tolimieri said.

The scientists who shared their stories inform and set salmon fisheries quotas and identify priority salmon habitat recovery work. They were hired to forecast climate impacts, like low-oxygen conditions and marine heat, on fisheries and provide data to reduce the risk of whale entanglements, among other things.

The loss of staff comes at a time when climate change is fueling a higher degree of uncertainty for fisheries managers and the fishing communities who depend on them. A study published last week found opportunities to make fish populations and fishing communities more resilient to climate impacts, but authors of the paper say deep cuts to NOAA may jeopardize those opportunities.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A NOAA fisheries spokesperson said the agency could not discuss “internal personnel and management matters” and “remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public …”

At the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Montlake, scientists are taking on additional work as contracts with janitorial, maintenance and other services lapsed because of Trump administration actions.

They lost their only oceanographer — someone who can untangle complex ocean environmental patterns — and picking up the responsibilities of their other terminated colleagues would require reducing or losing additional services they provide.

The Alaska and Northwest Fisheries Science centers and the two fishery management councils they advise are global leaders in developing sustainable approaches to fisheries management, said Bill Tweit, who represents Washington on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Read the full article at The Chronicle