Trump’s NOAA cuts will hurt Rhode Island's fishing industry, environment, and economy, say Rep Magaziner

"They’re not thinking about the impact they’re having on our economy here in Rhode Island. They are seeing numbers on a computer screen, we are seeing people’s jobs and livelihoods threatened."

United States Representative Seth Magaziner and Bob Rheault, Executive Director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association

United States Representative Seth Magaziner (Rhode Island, District 2) held a roundtable on Monday at Save the Bay in Providence, featuring fishing, aquaculture, environmental, and conservation leaders, to highlight the devastating impact that cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will have on the State’s economy and environment.

“When Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the people who they have slashing government agencies are making decisions in Washington, D.C., they’re not thinking about the impact on Rhode Island fishermen. They’re not considering their impact on our economy here in Rhode Island. They are seeing numbers on a computer screen, we are seeing people’s jobs and livelihoods threatened,” said Representative Magaziner during his remarks. “We are raising the alarm to ensure that we do everything we can to support working people in Rhode Island in the face of these cuts.”

In Rhode Island, NOAA supports a fishing and aquaculture industry that supports thousands of jobs, provides lifesaving weather forecasting, and funds research that strengthens the State’s blue economy and conservation of ocean resources. Proposed cuts, said Representative Magaziner, threaten jobs, local businesses, and the livelihoods of Rhode Islanders who depend on healthy oceans and sustainable fisheries.

The roundtable comes amid reports that the Trump Administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to slash NOAA’s workforce by 50 percent and cut its budget by 30 percent. Last Thursday, reports emerged that NOAA began terminating hundreds of workers, approximately 10 percent of its workforce. These cuts could gut vital research that fisheries depend on, delay seafood export certifications, jeopardize weather forecasting, and destroy conservation efforts.

Representative Magaziner was joined by Janet Coit, former Administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service; Terry Gray, Director, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM); Jed Thorp, Director of Advocacy, Save the Bay; Bob Rheault, Executive Director, East Coast Shellfish Growers Association; and Fred Mattera, Executive Director, Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island.

Here’s the video:

Here’s partial transcript, edited for clarity:

Representative Magaziner: People must understand that NOAA is vital to Rhode Island’s economy and the working people living off the ocean. Commercial fishing brings over a hundred million dollars and hundreds of jobs to Rhode Island annually. Recreational fishing brings even more. Thousands of Rhode Islanders rely on the Blue Economy for their livelihoods. NOAA provides critical support from lifesaving weather forecasting to supporting the fishing industry, protecting endangered species, and improving health outcomes for Rhode Islanders. It will be much harder for Rhode Islanders who work in the fishing industry, either commercial or recreational, to do their jobs without the support that NOAA offers.

And it’s not just what happens offshore. We have a growing and thriving aquaculture industry in Rhode Island that depends on NOAA for research and support. The point we want to make today is that people’s livelihoods are at risk when Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the people they have slashing government agencies make decisions in Washington, D.C.. They don’t think about the impact on Rhode Island fishermen.

They’re not thinking about the impact that they are having on our economy here in Rhode Island. They are seeing numbers on a computer screen. We are seeing people’s jobs and livelihoods threatened. We are raising the alarm to ensure we do everything possible to support working people in Rhode Island.

I’m a member of the House Natural Resources Committee. We have some jurisdiction over NOAA, and I’ve seen firsthand how NOAA directly helps Rhode Island fishermen with fish stock assessments that help guide how much fish can be caught without depleting populations; seafood inspection programs that help approve applications of Rhode Island fishermen to export their catch overseas and reach foreign markets; the NOAA SEA Grant, which helps fund research; and, of course, the National Weather Service, which provides weather data that we all rely on, but is critical and often lifesaving for people who make their livelihoods on a boat.

It has been announced that Donald Trump and Elon Musk plan to slash NOAA’s workforce by up to 50%, and last week they began firing hundreds of workers. NOAA falls under the Department of Commerce, and Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary wouldn’t even say that NOAA should exist when asked that question during Senate confirmation hearings.

What does this mean for Rhode Island? It means that you have Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their staff sitting behind computer screens making decisions that impact the lives and the jobs of hundreds of Rhode Islanders without regard for their impact. Deep cuts to NOAA attack Rhode Island’s fishing industry, our food economy, and safety for the workers who make their livelihood in the fishing industry. As the Ocean State, it directly attacks our character and quality of life, and we must fight back. Fighting back is raising the alarm, raising visibility, and getting the message out.

Bob Rheault, Executive Director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association: I represent about 2000 farms, from Maine to Texas, growing about $200 million worth of sustainably raised shellfish. In Rhode Island, we have 48 farmers that are rearing $8 million worth of oysters. It’s the highest value product raised from State waters and supports hundreds of jobs. NOAA is a great partner; these are sorry times of great sorrow.

But before I start, I have to say I come from a military family and the meeting in the White House with Zelensky on Friday was an embarrassment and a slap in the face to the millions of veterans who have sacrificed to defend democracy around the globe.

But back to the matter at hand. I’ve spent most of the weekend talking to friends about NOAA and figuring out what is happening. We’ve seen 800 probationary employees fired. We know that hiring is frozen. We know agency heads have been told to prepare for further workforce reductions by March 13th. The numbers are vague at this point. Based on the agencies’ actions, we know the process has been chaotic and disruptive, and some employees have been called back to work after a few days or weeks. We know from Project 2025 that traumatizing the federal workforce has always been part of the plan. It’s clearly stated that they have been successful. I’ve talked to people in tears trying to figure out how they will pay their mortgage.

NOAA is a $5 billion agency; two-thirds of that is weather - satellites, hurricane modeling, coastal resilience, oil spill response, etc… They just lost 163 full-time equivalent employees—Project 2025 calls for the National Weather Service to be privatized. I must remind you that fishermen and aquaculture farmers work on the water daily. We depend on accurate forecasts for our safety and to do our jobs of growing and harvesting sustainable seafood. We’ve made tremendous investments in weather satellites, compute power, and modeling, and I must say that if you look at the models when hurricanes are coming ashore, they’ve gotten incredibly accurate, and thank God, because they’re coming in faster and harder with more power and more destructive force. Privatizing our weather service… makes me shudder. We can argue about the causes of climate change, but we can’t deny it’s happening. If you work on a boat and stand outside all year, you know what’s happening.

In my short career, we’ve seen Southern New England lobster disappear, and now we’ve got sea bass populations, which used to be a Mid-Atlantic fish. It’s happening. It’s pretty obvious. You may not see it in your air-conditioned office, but if you get out it’s obvious. To pretend it’s not happening is irresponsible and puts people in harm’s way.

On Saturday, we learned that Umaine Sea Grant funding was cut. It appears this was part of a petty spat between the Governor of Maine, who refused to kowtow to demands to cut DEI initiatives. National SEA Grant is funded an estimated $80 million annually, dramatically benefiting coastal and Great Lakes communities. The return on investment is estimated at 800%. SEA Grant performs critical roles in extension and outreach and benefits virtually anyone who owns a boat, goes to a beach, or enjoys seafood.

We import 75% of the seafood we eat, which adds $20 billion to our trade deficit. $14 million per year is invested in the SEA Grant Aquaculture Research program, which provides critical funds and helps us cut back on the seafood we import by learning how to grow it here in the United States. NOAA Fisheries manages 500 stocks to mature sustainable landings… Our management plans are the world's envy and ensure sustainable fisheries that enable us to catch for future generations. I spent 16 years getting funds for a selective breeding program to develop regionally adapted lines of oysters that are disease resistant. Thanks to the work of Senator Reed, we got funding from URI, which has funded three geneticists and several technicians. Last week, several key geneticists were fired.

We managed to get them rehired, but the staff were not, so now we have geneticists that need to do their budgeting and procurement. We have a hatchery that has no one to run it. The NOAA lab in Milford, which is supposed to do the breeding work, can’t afford to buy filters, so we may not have oysters for the geneticists to work on. This is the antithesis of efficiency. This is a calamity performed in the clumsiest way possible. There are logical ways to reduce the workforce. This is nothing but panic or cement in the drains.

I’m not allowed to talk to my compatriots of the FDA, the CDC, or the EBA. They’re barred from talking to the public. We don’t know if illnesses are happening, if data is being recorded, or if our food supply is safe. I have an international aquaculture conference with thousands of attendees this week, and our agency staff is not allowed to attend. This is where we usually talk to our agencies and tell them our priorities for future research work. If we want our sustainable, nutritious seafood supply to grow, we must divorce ourselves from imports - and we just shoot ourselves in the foot. The craziest thing is that these cuts are supposed to support tax cuts, which the Brookings Institute estimates will add $10 trillion to the national debt. I only wish I was wealthy enough to enjoy the impacts of those cuts.

Steve Ahlquist: At what point do the cuts coming down from the federal government impact our local economy? If a large company in Rhode Island, say a hundred employees, were to go out of business, our local economy would feel that impact. Right now, we’re losing hundreds of good-paying federal jobs. What are the effects on the local economy? At what point does this become bad?

Representative Magaziner: Part of the challenge, which was alluded to earlier, is that it’s not like the Trump Administration is giving us a daily readout of how many people they have fired, in which states, and from which agencies. We have to rely on the anecdotes of people reaching out to our offices or people telling their stories in the media. We don’t know exactly how many people have been fired. We know that there have been firings that have impacted the USDA office in Rhode Island. They lost about a dozen people. We know at least one person has been fired at the Veterans Administration hospital. Some people have been fired at Naval Station Newport, which houses various federally funded programs. At this point, we don’t have an exact number. I don’t think we’re at the point yet where we’ve reached over a hundred. But we will get there pretty soon at the pace that we’re going.

I think the most significant economic challenge is the second-order impact of these cuts. Many of these roles existed to serve the private sector. I met with a group of the USDA employees who were let go last week. Their job was to help local farmers in Rhode Island, including oyster farmers, get loans and grants to finance new equipment, to finance improvements to their land, etc. They were serving Rhode Island small businesses, many of whom had to pay things like new tractors and improvements out of pocket - and now aren’t able to get back the money they are owed from the federal government because the office that they work with to file that application is essentially shuttered. That’s just one example.

I think there are a couple of orders of impact here. There’s the impact of having people fired so they’re not paying taxes, instead of drawing unemployment, and many of these people held roles to serve the private sector.

I hope that at some point, the administration realizes that they need to take a more rational approach to cost cutting and do it more thoughtfully and predictably because the process has been entirely chaotic, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous.