As the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump works to reduce staff and resources at NOAA Fisheries, a government watchdog has suggested more staff may be needed to improve the nation’s fisheries disaster assistance program.
The federal government’s fisheries disaster program was established to provide financial relief to the commercial fishing sector when it suffers a qualifying disaster, such as a sudden drop in population or the closure of a fishery for ecological reasons. However, the program has been frequently criticized by both commercial fishers and U.S. lawmakers for its lack of transparency and how long it takes the government to award disaster relief. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog organization, it took NOAA Fisheries between 1.3 years and 4.8 years to distribute funding for the 56 most recent fishery disaster determination requests.
U.S. lawmakers have attempted to improve the process; in 2022, Congress passed a law implementing deadlines that should have – if followed – cut down the timeline to just over a year. Congress passed a follow-up law to further hurry the process in 2024.
However, a new GAO report found that though NOAA Fisheries has implemented some changes in response to the 2022 law, issues remain.
“Specifically, not all agency officials who work on the program have access to up-to-date information on requests, program guidance does not have complete details, and the agency has not assessed staffing needs,” the GAO report stated.
For example, NOAA implemented a new disaster grants dashboard to help track disaster requests in November 2023, but access is limited.
“NMFS headquarters officials could not explain why other agency staff who work on the program were not given access to the dashboard,” GAO noted. “Without access to the tracking system, which now contains the most updated information about requests, NMFS regional officials may not be adequately equipped to respond to requests for status updates.”
According to GAO, NOAA Fisheries was working to ...
