Just weeks after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump laid off hundreds of employees at NOAA in February, the agency is preparing for another round of layoffs and the closure of more than a dozen offices.
Trump has made shrinking the federal workforce and slashing grant funding a priority during the early days of his administration, tasking Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with leading the cuts. The government first offered a payout to federal employees who agreed to resign but has since begun implementing mass layoffs, targeting probationary employees who have spent less than two years on the job and have fewer job protections.
DOGE first targeted NOAA in early February, entering the agency’s headquarters and gaining access to its IT systems. Less than a month later, the agency laid off hundreds of employees. Democrats and former NOAA officials were quick to criticize the layoffs, saying the reduction in employees will have major repercussions on NOAA’s services and missions.
“Today, over 1,000 scientists and experts at NOAA received the news every federal worker has been dreading. Musk and his fake officials, the DOGE tech bros, have been rummaging through our most sensitive data without authority in violation of the law for weeks now,” U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D-California) said at the time. “This has come with sweeping, indiscriminate layoffs of nonpartisan public servants. Park rangers, firefighters, scientists – all of these people, whose purpose is to serve everyday Americans, have had the rug pulled out from under them. We will all be worse off for it.”
Now, the agency is preparing for even more cuts, with sources telling the Associated Press that the Trump administration is planning to cut another 1,000 jobs – roughly 10 percent of NOAA’s workforce.
Conservation groups have lambasted the layoffs, arguing that they’ll degrade NOAA’s ability to support commercial fisheries and protect marine resources.
“Messing with the federal workforce charged with ensuring Americans know when severe weather is headed their way, that commercial fishing seasons start on time, protecting vital services the ocean provides us, or managing special places our families love to visit – just to name a few – is a classic ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’ mentality,” Healthy Ocean Coalition Executive Director Sarah Winter Whelan said in a statement. “It’s a sad fact that impacts of these firings and cuts will hit us all in some way. Whether it is delayed warnings for dangerous weather, fishermen unable to fish, or lost economic opportunities for Americans and coastal communities derived from our ocean economy. We have to stand up for the people at NOAA and the important work they do.”
DOGE has not been forthcoming with who exactly was laid off, and it’s not clear how many NOAA Fisheries employees were affected by the cuts. However, reporting from around the country has identified some layoffs. The Publics Radio, for instance, reported that 5 percent of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center was terminated last month, including fisheries biologist Sarah Weisberg.
“The reason that we exist is to provide information that is valuable to the fishing industry, to the fishing community. If we don’t exist, or if we are crippled, we simply can’t provide that information to the same caliber or the same extent,” Weisberg told The Publics Radio.
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to access the job descriptions of all the federal employees laid off at agencies doing key environmental work.
Following the first round of layoffs, former NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad – who left the position in January before the Trump administration took over – said the cuts could upset the economic stability of the U.S. fisheries sector.
“That's a USD 320 billion [EUR 305 million] annual industry, and it's hard to be the best in the world in an industry like that if you can't support the industry with things as fundamental as stock assessments,” Spinrad said. “By the way, there are 2.3 million jobs associated directly with NOAA’s management of the commercial fishing industry.”
“I travel in my job around the world; we have the best managed fishery in the whole world; that is due to NOAA,” former NOAA Director of Policy Sally Yozell said during the same press conference. “NOAA sustainably manages our fishery, so that it can be there from generation to generation and makes sure that we have seafood that is fresh and available. Without that, we're going to be just throwing the lifeline to China, which does not fish with sustainability in mind.”
DOGE has also listed 19 NOAA buildings on its list of more than 400 federal building “designated for disposal.”
