The federal agency that studies the ocean and manages fisheries lost about 1,200 employees in February. But for the fishermen regulated by the agency, it’s still business as usual on the docks.
On a recent Wednesday, many crews on New Bedford’s fishing piers were doing gear work for their next trip, as Eric Hansen repaired the cabinets in the galley of The Intrepid, one of his two scallop boats.
People on the docks have known for weeks about the mass firing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but Hansen said most people don’t realize how it will affect them yet.
“Some are welcoming the cuts, saying that the government has been their downfall and there’s too many regulations,” Hansen said. “And I don’t share that opinion.”
Hansen, a former captain from a fishing family where five consecutive generations entered the industry, said that’s because he remembers when the scallop fishery hit rock bottom.
“I fished back in the ‘80s, when there was very little regulation and the fishery was almost at a state of collapse,” he said. “We didn’t catch the last scallop, but we were trying to.”
In the 1990s, fishermen collaborated with scientists and regulators to create a management plan that helped save the fishery. Scallop populations rebounded, turning the species into the most valuable catch on the East Coast. A deckhand can now earn six figures on a good scallop boat, and the New Bedford fleet typically lands close to $500 million of scallop meats per year.
Many boat owners like Hansen volunteer their vessels and crew members to academic researchers who help gather data for NOAA. Hansen also serves on the New England Fishery Management Council, which uses the data scientists collect to set catch limits for each fishery.
“Given the long history that I have with my family in the industry, I wanted to make sure that there was a future for my son and my grandson,” Hansen said, “and the only way to do that is for good stewardship. And the only way to get good stewardship is if you have good information.”
In the most lucrative fisheries, NOAA leads multiple surveys a year. But some of the scientists whose job it was to go on those trips and analyze that data just got fired.
Fish biologist Sarah Weisberg said she was one of about 15 probationary employees at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center who received a surprise termination notice on Feb. 27.
“As soon as I got the email,” Weisberg said, “my phone started lighting up and everyone around me started crying because other people were getting essentially the exact same email, word for word.”
The termination notice was sent to over 800 people, and another 400 employees accepted a resignation offer to retire early around the same time, according to several former NOAA employees.
Weisberg was scheduled to leave on a three-week survey a few days later to collect data on groundfish like cod and haddock. She said the center almost canceled the survey because there weren’t enough scientists, but ended up scrambling together a crew.
Weisberg said if NOAA cancels future surveys, it will damage one of the agency’s mission critical services.
Surveys, she said, are “how we know anything really meaningful about what’s happening out at sea to fish populations and other populations.”
Several former NOAA employees said another round of mass terminations could interfere with future fisheries surveys, and more cuts are exactly what current and former NOAA employees are expecting.
“There is another wave of reductions in the works,” said Janet Coit, who led NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service before Trump terminated her in January. “Whether and how they’ll play out, I think no one knows.”
Coit said the Trump administration has already cut about 1,200 of the 12,000 employees who work across NOAA’s six subagencies, which include the Fisheries Service and the National Weather Service.
“Those do not have a pattern,” Coit said. “They were just whoever was in this probationary period, whether they were a new hire or someone promoted across NOAA.”
Coit said the leaders of NOAA’s subagencies have been told to collectively eliminate another 1,100 positions. Together with the previous cuts, Coit said that would represent a 20 percent reduction in NOAA’s workforce.
Still, the mass firings will not eliminate any of the federal fishing regulations required under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
“There has been no law enacted that eliminates the need for regulations,” Coit said. “They’re still required, but you would make that process less efficient if you had key people missing who were doing that work.”
Several fisheries regulators and former NOAA employees said losing scientists will ultimately give regulators blurrier estimates of fish populations.
As a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, Hansen said that would likely require him to set even more cautious catch limits to prevent any possibility of overfishing. Hansen said that means his fishing crews could lose work next year, when the regulations based on this year’s surveys go into effect.
“Less resources for science would mean a smaller paycheck, in the simplest terms,” Hansen said.
Under the current regulations, Hansen said the Intrepid only spends about 41 days fishing offshore every year. Now that Trump’s NOAA cuts are in motion, he said he might be fishing even less.
The federal government is already delayed in reviewing the new annual regulations for the scallop fishery. That means scallop fishermen will start the fishing year on April 1 under default regulations that reduce their catch limit by 25%.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio.
