Let’s tell Congress not to cut NOAA’s work – including national marine sanctuaries, fisheries and weather

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It’s time to tell Congress to protect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from further staff and budget cuts. The agency’s work includes marine sanctuaries (including our own Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary), the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and marine mammal protection, as well as data collection, mapping and modeling used by communities and industry that underpins our daily lives and safety. 

Congress must approve NOAA’s funding as part of its 2026 budget, which starts October 1, 2025. The administration has proposed cutting NOAA’s allocation from around $6.1 billion to about $4.5 billion, a decrease of nearly $1.7 billion, or 27%. 

This would have potentially disastrous results, particularly during weather emergencies. For example, NOAA scientists accurately predicted and warned the West Coast about the path and timing of the 2011 tsunami that resulted from a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Fukushima, Japan. The tsunami hit the Santa Cruz Harbor and other sites from Alaska to Baja California.  

Several former NOAA administrators have predicted there could be “loss of life” as a result of proposed budget cuts at the National Weather Service, which supports public safety and our economy using sophisticated, reliable models to predict rough seas or severe storms. 

Cuts are also slated for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, which includes national marine sanctuaries, the National Marine Fisheries Service, as well as teams that map, monitor and predict ocean and climate conditions that affect commerce, including commercial shipping. The administration’s justification for these cuts is to focus on “core activities” and to reduce spending on climate change research. 

NOAA has already been affected by staff reductions imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In the Monterey Bay area, DOGE dismissed probationary and recently promoted NOAA employees in the first round of staff cuts. More terminations are anticipated, and roughly 8% of NOAA’s workforce of 12,000 have taken an early retirement package.

These employees are scientists, educators and subject-matter experts. They are knowledgeable and hard-working, and I’m privileged to know and have worked with many of them. The loss in expertise will result in fewer people to do the same amount of work, much of which is technical and requires a high degree of training and experience.

What would be the impact on our region’s environment? 

One popular regional NOAA asset is Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, a biologically rich 6,094 miles of water located off 276 miles of shoreline from southern Marin County to northern San Luis Obispo County. 

Designated in 1992, its small team works with partners to study, steward and educate the public about habitats and the life they support within it, including the 2½-mile deep Monterey Bay submarine canyon, the 7,500-foot-high Davidson Seamount that is 4,100 feet below the ocean’s surface, and an array of habitats such as our kelp forests, which host the California sea otter. 

The sanctuary’s staff and volunteers undertake multiple projects such as responding to vessel incidents, studying deep-sea corals, removing marine debris, participating in whale disentanglement and reducing the incidence of ship strikes, and the monitoring and preservation of water quality.

It also runs visitor centers including San Simeon’s Coastal Discovery Center and Santa Cruz’s Sanctuary Exploration Center, which hosts 60,000 visitors per year, including students from low-income schools on field trips. 

We don’t know yet which sanctuary programs, research and initiatives will be lost, but the cuts are likely to affect our environment and economy.

The sanctuary supports the area economy and jobs including those in tourism, which in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties alone generates $4.4 billion in annual revenue. By working with other science and ocean institutions such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, our federal dollars get matched, effectively using our taxpayer funds.

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is one of 18 sanctuaries – including six on the West Coast – plus two marine national monuments that cover 629,000 square miles of water, all of which are managed by the NOAA. 

The public has shown great support for marine sanctuaries. A 2022 poll commissioned by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation found that 80% of Americans support protecting marine areas with environmental, cultural or educational importance.

For the federal budget year starting Oct. 1, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation urges Congress to support the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at no less than $115 million. The federal government has not yet proposed a budget, so we don’t know what its offer will be.  

Thanks to the foundation’s efforts to work with local supporters of national marine sanctuaries across the country, a growing bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators and representatives has formed a caucus in support of sanctuaries. They are supported by their constituents who care about the ocean and are advocating for national marine sanctuaries on Capitol Hill with help from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

That $115 million is just a start, though; a 2021 report by the National Academy of Public Administration finds that while historically underfunded national parks have received $30 per acre, national marine sanctuaries have received only 14 cents per acre.

To contact your U.S. senators and your local representative in Congress in the next few weeks in support of adequate funding for national marine sanctuaries, including Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, visit marinesanctuary.org. 

You can also contact your federal representatives directly to ask that NOAA’s entire budget be funded in 2026 at least at the same level it received last year. It takes only a few minutes, but it’s well worth it.

Former Save Our Shores and O’Neill Sea Odyssey director Dan Haifley serves on the board of the Monterey Bay chapter of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.