In the bright green algal blooms that form in warm weather, cyanobacteria produce a toxin called microcystin. Microcystin has been known to kill dogs, birds, and livestock and cause nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting in people. Just over a dozen people employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are tasked with monitoring algal blooms in the Great Lakes watershed, which more than 40 million people depend on for the water that comes out of their taps. The NOAA team passes information about harmful algal growth and toxicity on to municipal water treatment plants in time for them to protect people, pets, and businesses from being poisoned.
Last Thursday, the head of that team was fired, alongside hundreds of other NOAA employees. Bret Collier, who holds a Ph.D. in biology, started running the Ecosystem Dynamics branch at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Michigan last May. Like most other “probationary” employees across NOAA and the National Weather Service—those who were new to the federal workforce, took on new positions, or were promoted—he received a late-afternoon email notifying him that he was being fired, effective at 5 p.m.
“When you remove a staffer, there’s not another staffer that can just pick up that work. I don’t want to say we don’t have a deep bench. There’s no bench. We’re one deep everywhere,” he told me. “If we can’t do our job, you can’t drink the water.”
NOAA is best known for its weather forecasts that alert people about the path of oncoming hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis. Its lesser-known “wet side” operations perform a long list of vital services baked into the operations of other federal agencies and private businesses, often in sparsely staffed offices. Close allies of Trump—including several now serving in his administration—laid out plans to virtually abolish the entire agency in Project 2025, clearing the way for private companies like Accuweather to snap up lucrative new government contracts for work that has long been considered a public service. Elon Musk’s team at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency reportedly intends to cut NOAA’s staff in half, and has already moved to cancel leases for its labs and office spaces around the country.
That could endanger critical work to protect not just forecasting and water quality but fisheries, international shipping operations, tourism, and more. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, or GLERL, where Collier worked, employed about 50 federal workers tasked with providing real-time information on everything from ice floes—helping commercial freighters avoid collisions—to zooplankton and phytoplankton monitoring that lets recreational and commercial fishermen know which populations are safe to catch and sell. The U.S. Coast Guard utilizes GLERL’s nautical charts, marine weather forecasts, and real-time observations on currents and water levels in search and rescue operations. Among the eight or nine other employees Collier estimated had been fired from GLERL last week was one worker who ran “all the code” for the network of buoys that collect the information necessary to produce those forecasts. Just one person, he said, was left in the team that communicates the monitoring and assessment information GLERL collects to the public, acting as a liaison with state and local governments.
These cuts mean NOAA staff will be forced to take “a more constrained approach to mission-specific operations moving forward,” said Collier. That means “longer time lapses between data collection and data dissemination, especially safety data.” Real-time observations and monitoring “may not be real-time anymore,” he added.
“We’re not sexy like the weather service,” Collier joked. “We can’t tell you when a tornado is going to hit or if a hurricane is gonna be a Category 3. Our job is to not be seen and not be heard, and keep everybody safe. Right now, that’s getting a lot harder.”
Aside from emails that have gone out to all federal employees encouraging them to take “higher productivity” jobs in the private sector and list their recent accomplishments, Collier said he had never been contacted to ask what his team did or the risks that might be posed by axing them, or about whether doing so would endanger programs mandated by federal legislation. Other fired NOAA employees I spoke with said that firings in their departments had been similarly indiscriminate.
Even before last week, Collier’s team was sorting out how to deal with a $1 limit on credit cards used to purchase equipment required for his team’s day-to-day operations; elsewhere in NOAA, his colleagues have had trouble buying equipment to repair ships and radar. “If we’re not allowed to purchase the filters that we use to monitor microcystin toxins, then we’re unable to relay that information,” he says, noting that such equipment is typically ordered months in advance. “They’re uncertain that they’re going to have what they need to keep municipal water corporations informed on the status of algal blooms in the Great Lakes. That’s a pretty big risk.”
A 2014 microsystin outbreak in Lake Erie—shallower and warmer than the other Great Lakes, and therefore more prone to large-scale algal blooms—left nearly half a million people in Toledo and surrounding areas without water for three days. Harmful algal blooms of the sort GLERL monitors are estimated to cost the U.S. $50 million per year nationwide through damage to public health, fisheries, and coastal restoration. That figure could rise as these phenomena grow more frequent in a warming climate.
Climate scientist Sarah Cooley—who was fired from her position as the director of NOAA’s program on ocean acidification—reported similar challenges in the lead-up to last week’s purge, including navigating compliance with Trump’s executive order to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and language. “If we had a report or a strategy that was already approved and that had a DEI section in it,” she said, “would that section have to be removed, or would that report have to be pulled down?” Federal grants are legally binding contracts. Her office wasn’t provided with clear guidance about whether those could be altered to comply with new presidential memos and executive orders, or what to do if implementing those stood at odds with congressional mandates.
As soon as she got word she was being fired, Cooley said “the race was on” to pass on necessary information to the rest of her team before her internet access was cut off and she lost access to her federal email and I.T. systems. “There was a whole lot to do, as fast as possible.”
From weather forecasting and warning systems to fisheries management, NOAA’s vast operations provide valuable research and information that can’t be replicated elsewhere—or by the private sector. Even massive corporations don’t have the capacity in-house to produce the kinds of detailed maps and forecasts that NOAA creates and that large and small businesses alike depend on every day. Academic researchers around the world rely on observations from NOAA buoys and satellites to understand the ocean carbon cycle worldwide, a key factor in the stability of the earth’s climate, given that the ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink. That monitoring also makes it possible to prepare for and limit the considerable damage caused by El Niños and marine heat waves, and build durable infrastructure.
“Who’s going to put up satellites and place buoys in the ocean, and do it at cost? That’s not going to happen,” Cooley says. “When it comes to the fundamental earth observations of ocean heat content and acidification—the things that inform how habitats are doing and how to manage them skillfully—those things are not monetizable because not every citizen is going to be willing to pay for that information.”
