AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Some commercial fishermen are facing stricter regulations because of President Trump's cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From our member station, The Public's Radio, Ben Burke takes us to the docks of America's highest-grossing fishing port where scallop boats will be hauling in a lighter catch next month.
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BEN BURKE, BYLINE: The sea scallop is the most valuable catch on the East Coast. And this year, the federal government is late reviewing new regulations. That means scallop boats in New Bedford, Massachusetts, will see their catch limits cut by 25% until the new regulations get approved.
ERIC HANSON: It's a little bit of climbing. You got - to get down here.
BURKE: Eric Hanson (ph) owns two scallop boats. On the deck of The Intrepid, he tells me there's a lot of talk on the waterfront about President Trump slashing jobs at NOAA. But Hanson says most fishermen don't realize how this will affect them yet.
HANSON: Some are welcoming the cuts, saying that the government has been their downfall. There's too many regulations, and I don't share that opinion.
BURKE: That's because Hanson remembers when the scallop fishery hit rock bottom.
HANSON: I fished back in the '80s when there was very little regulation, and the fishery was almost at a state of collapse. We didn't catch the last scallop but we were trying to.
BURKE: In the '90s, fishermen collaborated with NOAA on regulations that saved the fishery. Many boat owners like Hanson now volunteer their vessels to collect data that NOAA uses to keep a close eye on scallop populations. Hanson also serves on the New England Fishery Management Council, which uses that data to set sustainable catch limits.
HANSON: Given the long history that I have with my family and the industry, I wanted to make sure that there was a future for my son and my grandson. And the only way to get good stewardship is if you have good information.
BURKE: In the most lucrative fisheries, NOAA leads multiple surveys a year, where scientists board ships, go fishing and draw statistical inferences from what comes up in their nets and dredges. But some of these scientists, like fish biologist Sarah Weisberg (ph), got emails telling them they were fired last month.
SARAH WEISBERG: You know, my phone started lighting up, and everyone around me started crying because other people were getting essentially the exact same email, word for word, sent to - now we know - hundreds of people, closer to 1,000 people.
BURKE: Weisberg was about to go out on a survey to collect data on groundfsh like cod and haddock. She says NOAA almost had to cancel the survey because there weren't enough scientists. They ended up scrambling together a crew but Weisberg says if NOAA cancels future surveys, it will damage one of the agency's mission-critical services.
WEISBERG: It's how we know anything, really, meaningful about what's happening out at sea.
BURKE: Weisberg and other scientists may win their jobs back through a federal lawsuit. But Janet Coit, who led NOAA fisheries until January, says the Trump administration is still trying to cut an additional thousand jobs across the agency. She says this wouldn't actually loosen any fishing regulations.
JANET COIT: There has been no law enacted that eliminates the need for regulations. They're still required. And so if you reduce the number of people that work on the regulations, you actually could gum up the works and have a counterproductive result.
BURKE: A spokesperson for NOAA declined to comment. But scallop boat owner Eric Hanson says losing fishery scientists will lead to blurrier estimates of fish populations. As a member of New England's Fishery Management Council, Hanson says he'll be required by law to act more cautiously and set stricter catch limits. As a fisherman, he expects his own crew to feel the impact next year.
HANSON: Less resources for science would mean a smaller paycheck, in the simplest terms.
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BURKE: The Intrepid only spent about 40 days at sea last year. Hanson expects to be fishing even less next year. For NPR 瓜神app, I'm Ben Burke in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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