On Feb. 27, Mark Baltzell got the email while he was busy working to manage Columbia River salmon fisheries for NOAA in Olympia, Washington.

Despite more than two decades of experience in his field, the email from NOAA Vice Admiral Nancy Hann said he was not fit for continued employment because his “knowledge, skills and abilities did not fit the agency needs.” He was given 68 minutes to leave.

On Thursday, he spoke out alongside Democratic Washington Sen. Patty Murray and other former NOAA staffers.

Baltzell said he’s concerned about how the layoffs will impact fisheries and the tens of millions of dollars that go through the agency for salmon recovery, habitat restoration and supporting tribal fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.

“All is in danger of going away,” he said.

Baltzell is among an estimated 650 NOAA workers who have been fired, including dozens in Washington state, according to Murray.

“This work is make or break. Not just for Washington state but for our entire country,” Murray said. “It is beyond me that right now Donald Trump and Elon Musk are choosing ‘break’ and taking a wrecking ball to NOAA offices.”

More than 1,000 additional agency staff are expected to be cut in the coming weeks after federal departments faced a March 13 deadline to provide plans for “large scale reductions in force,” following a directive from the Office of Personnel Management.

The agency’s late February round of layoffs resulted in 19 staff members cut at two science centers in Seattle, according to Nick Tolimieri, the president of the NOAA Professional Employees Association, a union representing agency employees in the Northwest.

Those fired included Rebecca Howard, a research fish biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. She did surveys to assess the health of Alaskan shellfish and groundfish, and said it will be extremely difficult to complete these surveys with more layoffs.

“We need these types of data to know how many fish and crabs we can catch each year, where those populations are going as the oceans change, and to keep track of environmental trends,” Howard said. “Firing people like me will make it incredibly hard for NOAA fisheries to fulfill its mission to keep our fisheries sustainable.”

The NOAA layoffs could have impacts on data collection determining how long commercial fishing seasons are open.

“You have to have stock assessments in order to regulate,” said Gary Ripka, a fisherman from Newport, Ore. who spoke at a Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Vancouver last week. “If you don’t have people to do the stock assessments, if there’s cuts, they might just say ‘we’re done’ until we get people.”

Tolimieri said Northwest NOAA staff doing stock assessments have not yet been fired, but the agency has terminated fishery observers and a lead oceanographer, whose work contributes to ocean stock assessments.

A more immediate concern for Ripka is the maintenance of NOAA’s network of weather buoys, which monitor ocean and weather conditions.

“As a fisherman, maintaining the weather buoys for safety and commerce is a big deal. If they don’t maintain the buoys, it’s going to put people’s lives at risk,” he said.

On land, NOAA’s National Weather Service plays a critical role during wildfire season in Oregon and Washington, according to Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s former administrator under the Biden administration.

“If you’ve got a fire in the Cascades in Washington state, there will be incident meteorologists reporting to provide on-scene support,” Spinrad said. “I know for a fact that some of those IMETs will not be on the job.”

On March 13, a federal judge ordered thousands of probationary employees from agencies like the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Treasury and others to be reinstated after finding that they were improperly terminated by the Trump Administration.

The February NOAA layoffs took place after cuts at other agencies, so they were not included in that lawsuit, according to Tolimieri. Department of Commerce employees who were fired, including those at NOAA, are involved in a similar lawsuit over improper terminations, he said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/03/13/ousted-noaa-workers-join-murray-to-denounce-cuts-as-the-agency-braces-for-more-firings/