Saving Seafood

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

Trump implements new tariffs on Canada, Mexico with both countries planning retaliation

March 4, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on his original order to institute 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, launching tariffs on goods from both countries on 4 March after a one-month pause.

In addition to the 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump also instituted an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods on top of the 10 percent he announced in February, meaning certain goods from China are now subject to a 45 percent import tariff.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

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 

MAINE: Maine loses popular Sea Grant funding, 1 week after governor’s public confrontation with Trump

March 4, 2025 — Over the weekend, the Trump administration told the University of Maine that it is discontinuing a $4.5 million award to the Maine Sea Grant Program.

There are 33 other similar Sea Grant programs in coastal and Great Lakes states around the country. Yet only Maine appears to have had its funding revoked. And the announcement came one week after Gov. Janet Mills sparred publicly with President Donald Trump at the White House about his executive order on transgender athletes.

The four-year federal award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went into effect last February and would have awarded Maine Sea Grant roughly $4.5 million through January 2028, including about $1.5 million this year.

“It has been determined that the program activities proposed to be carried out in year 2 of the Maine Sea Grant Omnibus Award are no longer relevant to the focus of the administration’s priorities and program objectives,” NOAA wrote in a letter to the University of Maine.

The program now appears to be in jeopardy, though both the UMaine system and its partners were still determining the specific impacts on Monday.

Federal and matching funds support the salaries of 20 people at the university and around the state. A spokesperson said Monday that the University of Maine system is still assessing how the funding cuts will directly impact staff and research projects underway.

Read the full article at wbur

MASSACHUSETTS: Lightning strikes Vineyard Wind’s broken offshore wind blade

March 4, 2025 — In what appears to be a remarkable coincidence, lightning apparently struck the remains of the Vineyard Wind turbine blade that crumbled into the ocean last summer.

No one was injured and no debris have been found in the water, according to Vineyard Wind, the company constructing the 62-turbine project near Martha’s Vineyard. In a statement, the company said it “deployed both aerial and maritime resources” and saw no evidence that any other part of the turbine was damaged.

It’s unclear when the lightning hit, but the company said it found “preliminary evidence” indicating a possible strike while conducting a routine inspection of the turbine. The U.S. Coast Guard said it was notified by Vineyard Wind on Thursday.

Petty Officer Lyric Jackson said “there are no navigational hazards to report.” She added that the Coast Guard is “standing by” and is in communication with Vineyard Wind.

The incident comes at a fraught time for the offshore wind industry. President Trump ordered a stop to all leasing and permitting for offshore wind development on his first day in office, and a review of all existing leases.

Read the full article at wbur

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

‘This Is a Calamity’: Federal Cuts Decimate NOAA Programs and Threaten Rhode Island’s Blue Economy

March 4, 2025 — As chaos and uncertainty continue to be unleashed on federal agencies thanks to the policies of the Trump administration, the Ocean State’s blue economy is just starting to feel those downstream impacts.

While federal jobs by themselves don’t play an outsized role in the state’s economy, many functions of scientific marine research, marine resource management, and commercial fishing rely heavily on federal initiatives or funding.

The past few weeks have seen 800 probationary employees at the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fired without cause, and further deep cuts to agency staffing are expected by a March 13 deadline issued by the White House to its federal agency chiefs.

Many of the federal grants awarded to states, nonprofits or other nongovernmental agencies remain frozen and inaccessible, despite multiple court orders from multiple district judges to turn the funding spigot back on.

Read the full article at EcoRi News

MAINE: Trump administration terminates Maine Sea Grant

March 3, 2025 — The Maine Sea Grant program was abruptly ended by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amid sweeping cutbacks to NOAA’s budget.

The news came Saturday during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, an annual industry gathering in Rockland that Maine Sea Grant first helped organize in the 1980s. The Trump administration budget ax would cut $1.5 million in funding this year, $4.5 million through January 2028 and affect 20 Sea Grant workers at the University of Maine in Orono and the state’s small coastal ports.  

“It has been determined that the program activities proposed to be carried out in Year 2 of the Maine Sea Grant Omnibus Award are no longer relevant to the focus of the Administration’s priorities and program objectives,” stated a notification letter from NOAA to University of Maine officials.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Coastal economies rely on NOAA, from Maine to Florida, Texas and Alaska – even if they don’t realize it

March 3, 2025 — Healthy coastal ecosystems play crucial roles in the U.S. economy, from supporting multibillion-dollar fisheries and tourism industries to protecting coastlines from storms.

They’re also difficult to manage, requiring specialized knowledge and technology.

That’s why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency best known for collecting and analyzing the data that make weather forecasts and warnings possible – leads most of the government’s work on ocean and coastal health, as well as research into the growing risks posed by climate change.

The government estimates that NOAA’s projects and services support more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet, this is one of the agencies that the Trump administration has targeted, with discussions of trying to privatize NOAA’s forecasting operations and disband its crucial climate change research.

As a marine environmental historian who studies relationships among scientists, fishermen and environmentalists, I have seen how NOAA’s work affects American livelihoods, coastal health and the U.S. economy.

Here are a few examples from just NOAA’s coastal work, and what it means to fishing industries and coastal states.

Read the full article at The Conversation