By: Alex Kuffner, Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE – The first impacts of the mass layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are starting to be felt in Rhode Island, and those who know and work with the federal scientific and regulatory agency are worried that deeper cuts could threaten the state’s all-important squid fishery, its oyster farms and its ability to accurately assess lobster stocks.
“I think this really has a huge potential to do damage to our ability to produce seafood for our nation,” said Robert Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association.
He spoke Monday alongside other fisheries and environmental experts on a panel organized by Congressman Seth Magaziner to highlight the importance of NOAA’s work to the Ocean State.
The event at Save The Bay was organized in the wake of reports late last week that hundreds of probationary employees had been fired at the agency and that there were plans to terminate potentially thousands more staff at one of the nation’s preeminent centers for climate science, marine research and weather forecasting.
“It will be much harder for Rhode Islanders who work in the fishing industry … to be able to do their jobs without the support that NOAA has to offer,” said Magaziner, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources. “People’s livelihoods are at risk.”
‘Chaotic’ layoffs at agency
Janet Coit, the former director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management who left that post in 2021 to head up the National Marine Fisheries Service at NOAA, was among the panelists. She said that, crucially, it’s not just early-career employees who have been fired from the agency, as the targeting of those on probationary status would suggest.
Anyone at NOAA who’s promoted or has taken a new job is automatically placed on probation, she said, so the layoffs are also hitting its most experienced and highest-performing employees.
She said she’s talked to staff who’ve been fired and described the Trump administration’s handling of the process as “chaotic.”
“That was indiscriminate. That was not strategic,” said Coit, who left her job during the change in administration.
The layoffs include what she’s heard to be about five staff members at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Narragansett Laboratory, including two operations workers, which Coit said raises questions about the ability to keep the facility running over the long term.
Layoffs include cuts to staff at NOAA lab in Narragansett
Fish biologist Sarah Weisberg was also among the lab employees to be fired. She said she received an email at about 4 p.m. Thursday notifying her that her position had been terminated and giving her until 5 p.m. that day to exit the lab.
Weisberg, a graduate of Harvard University, was hired by the lab after completing her Ph.D at Stony Brook University, which was funded in part through a prestigious fellowship co-sponsored by NOAA that aims to train the next generation of scientists in fisheries management. Her job specialized in ecosystems dynamics, a new approach to regulating fish stocks that accounts for temperature, phytoplankton levels and other environmental indicators to get a more complete picture of population dynamics.
“It’s so we can make better decisions, and not just for managers to make better decisions but so fishermen can use the data too,” said Weisberg, who was not on the panel but spoke separately to The Journal.
Weisberg had been in the job for five months and in January had just finished moving into the house she and her husband bought in Providence. A week and a half before she was fired, she was given a commendation for the work she had done so far.
“It was my dream job,” she said.
‘We lose squid, Point Judith’s a ghost town’
About 15 people overall at the sites managed by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center were let go.
Many of them, including Weisberg, were part of “The Squid Squad,” a team that studies squid populations and the marine conditions that affect them. The head scientist for the team, who was also based at the Narragansett lab, was also fired and their work is now on hold.
The team’s work is key to Rhode Island because the longfin squid fishery is by far the largest in the state, generating nearly $26 million in landings in 2023, more than double the value of any other species.
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“We lose squid, Point Judith’s a ghost town,” said Fred Mattera, a former longtime commercial fisherman who is president of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation. “We’ve shifted in species over my years. When I started, it was flat fishing and cod fishing and scup offshore and butterfish, and now it’s squid, squid, squid. That’s it.”
He said that having local scientists who understand the fishery is important because squid stocks and their timing can undergo dramatic swings from month to month and year to year. The stock is managed on a trimester basis, and with the support of the scientists who know these shifts can happen, fishermen have been able to have their quotas rolled over if necessary, said Mattera.
“We need the science,” he said. “We need to understand. And that’s what NOAA provides.”
NOAA-funded research projects important to Rhode Island are also threatened
It’s also what Mattera’s foundation provides, with the help of NOAA funding, through its program to monitor lobster numbers in federal waters. The program pays lobstermen to collect and record data on catches that include juveniles so scientists can better understand populations dynamics for the crustacean.
But late Friday night, NOAA moved to cut Maine Sea Grant, which partly funds the lobster research, and Mattera raised concerns that the rest of the federal funding for the program could also be lost.
Rheault, too, is already seeing real impacts. A project he’s been helping coordinate to breed disease-resistant oysters for Rhode Island and beyond to boost production is on the brink because of the staff cuts. The project is raising oysters at a hatchery based in the NOAA lab in Milford, Connecticut and then sending them to genetics experts at the University of Rhode Island for analysis.
Rheault said that the hatchery can’t operate without new seawater filters but can’t buy them because of the funding freeze. The project was ramping up and was set to not only grow more oysters but also hire two more geneticists and 20 technicians, but all that’s on hold.
“This is the antithesis of efficiency,” he said. “This is a calamity.”
NOAA would not comment specifically when asked about the cuts at the Narragansett and Milford labs, as well as reported firings of the entire crew of the research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, which is homeported in Newport.
“Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters,” said Scott Smullen, deputy director of NOAA communications. “NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience.”
Magaziner said that the bigger impacts of the cuts at NOAA will only be felt later.
“Not having accurate stock assessments isn’t going to change anybody’s life on day one, but over time, it can impact the industry in a severely negative way,” he said. “Same with the National Weather Service [which is part of NOAA]. People’s lives may not be any different tomorrow, but over time there will be significant damage.”