‘I’m Heartbroken’: California Scientists Left Adrift by Mass Federal Layoffs at NOAA

Many in California’s science community are reeling after last week’s mass firings within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration upended workers’ lives and raised dire concerns for the climate agency’s work going forward.

At least seven people, including National Weather Service employees and staff at the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NOAA Fisheries, lost their jobs along the Central Coast.

Their stories are similar and heart-wrenching. The early-career federal workers are planning marriages, recently signed mortgages and were saving to buy their first homes. But last Thursday, they got an email saying they were “not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge, and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs” — many of them before their supervisors even knew.

With a 5 p.m. Eastern deadline before they were locked out of their emails and accounts, they scrambled, downloading health information, salary details, performance reports and hard copies of their termination letters.

Three employees were fired from NOAA Fisheries’ Monterey office, including a communications specialist and two scientists, according to the researchers. Another fisheries communication expert lost his job in Santa Cruz.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Heather Welch, a research biologist at NOAA Fisheries employed to work on the NOAA Climate, Ecosystems and Fisheries Initiative. “That was definitely the job I hoped to retire in.”

Welch and her boyfriend bought a house a few months after she started her job in April. Now, she must figure out her next steps and hopes a remote job will fill the financial void.

“All of a sudden, I’m a lot less mobile,” said Welch, who modeled the migration paths of species like endangered loggerhead turtles and whales with advanced tracking networks. “I can’t move to a different state and take a different job. It’s a tough time to have bought a house, both in terms of mobility and then financially.”

She told KQED that two others she works with also lost their jobs — communications specialist Matthew Koller and a physical scientist who could not be reached for comment.

“It feels like a breakup of a family, and so it was really sad to walk out that door,” Welch said.

Welch said their work flowed into each other. The physical scientist developed forecasts and ocean models for changing ocean temperatures. Welch applied that data, relating it to animals, and turned it into tools for fisheries managers. Koller summarized the work and presented it to the general public.

Koller was fired after only four months of service. It took him about a year to land the job.

“I was terminated from my position at the exact same time that the training wheels were coming off,” said the 36-year-old, who recently moved to Monterey after graduate school and a fellowship. “It’s very unfortunate to have a career in the federal service cut short after putting in so much time to get this opportunity.”

Like the three workers who were fired from the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office last week — a meteorologist, an administrative support assistant and a facilities technician — the other four NOAA staffers who lost their jobs were probationary employees.

Some of them are worried that the cuts are just the beginning of Trump’s attack on climate science, fearing that the decision could have larger ramifications for the California coastline and endangered species.

Since most of the workers who lost their jobs had them for short periods of time, Koller feels like the Trump administration is trying to stamp out the next generation of climate science leadership.

“The future leaders of NOAA were just cut,” he said. “The people that will eventually become senior scientists and project leads and help set the agency’s policy. It’s just very dispiriting.”

Koller also believes the layoffs cut into NOAA’s mission of trying to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coast — as well as communicating its findings to the public.

“It really hamstrings NOAA’s ability to fulfill that mission,” he said. “We should be investing in those programs and not terminating them because the welfare of all Americans and Californians depend on understanding our environment — and NOAA helps provide that clarity.”

In addition to losing his job, Koller is getting married and is concerned that his firing might muddle his August nuptial plans.

“Ironically, earlier in the week, I had just put down a deposit for our wedding venue,” he said. “We put down the deposit on Wednesday, and I was unfortunately terminated on Thursday. How do we pay for a wedding without a job?”

The local losses are part of the Trump administration’s latest mass culling of the federal workforce, which has resulted in hundreds of firings within NOAA, one of the world’s preeminent climate research institutions. This effort is overseen by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the newly formed entity led by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat representing communities from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, has criticized the firings as a betrayal of the American people.

“If we were looking for a point at which this crazy DOGE exercise really backfired into people’s lives, I think you’ve found it with NOAA,” he said.

About 40 miles north of Monterey in Santa Cruz, another NOAA Fisheries science communications specialist is now on the hunt for a new job.

After stints in public media and federal agencies like the National Park Service, Jerimiah Oetting landed a full-time gig with NOAA in Santa Cruz about six months ago. He wrote about science and fish populations, like salmon and steelhead, for the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, which he said is mandated to increase and keep species of salmon from going extinct.

He said he was the only person cut from his building.

“I believe in public service, and I think being able to support myself as a public servant and do work that I really care about and love was a dream come true,” he said.

Oetting is frustrated that the email he received said he doesn’t have the “skills, abilities, and knowledge” for the job “when clearly I possess those things.” He’s also worried about whether he and his wife can remain in Santa Cruz because the area is one of the most expensive rental markets in the country. His wife is a doctoral student and now the unit’s sole breadwinner.

“We’ve saved as much as we can, and that was hopefully eventually going to be a down payment on a house,” he said. “It’s turned into an emergency fund that honestly won’t last us very long.”

He’s also concerned that his colleagues still at NOAA could be on the chopping block if the Trump administration goes after climate-related programs and makes more cuts to its workforce.

“Now that there’s closure, I’m just focused on the future and righteously angry about what happened,” he said, “but I’m also trying to figure out a way to get involved in any way I can to stop this from happening more.”