There is a war on science right now in the US government that are targeting NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, by the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, headed by Elon Musk. He's not even an elected official. Congresspeople and senators are not happy with the way
things are going. And on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we're going to talk about the cuts that we've seen this in the past, not only at the other Trump administration, but also in Canada back in the early 2010s. We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
your host, Andrew Loew. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you need to live for a better ocean by taking action. And I'll tell you, all three things need to happen right now. We are seeing a lot of just dismantling of infrastructure and funding that has been put into place for decades for a lot of ocean protection. And that's why we're talking about this today.
The Trump administration has allowed Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, to go into various departments and go in and just essentially dismantle everything. It's a really interesting yet scary situation for a lot of the people. There have been accusations and these are only accusations at this point. I haven't seen any evidence of intimidation like this being accused of by Doge officials to essentially bully people into giving up
whatever they have. There's been accusations of eliminating documents. There's been accusations of freezing funding. And there have been a lot of accusations of just these employees that are actually showing up on the department, like the EPA's staff list, and just kind of integrating themselves into the Environmental Protection Agency. Whether they qualify to be in the Environmental Protection Agency or NOAA or any of the other departments, we're not sure. We don't know who the people
are. There have been a number of videos that have come out showing government officials trying to get into the EPA, trying to get into the Department of Education, and they're not allowed. They've been denied by security. They've been told, "Hey, we're going to get somebody. We'll figure this out, but you have to stay here. You have to stay outside and you have to
wait." Obviously not ideal when members of Congress, members of the Senate cannot get access to find out what's happening with all of these departments. What cuts are happening? Where's the money going? Is it even legal to do some of these cuts? That's what's really happening here. And that's the scary part of this situation. So I'm going to run through some of the things that I've been able to gather and figure out what's been happening.
So there's been a takeover at NOAA's headquarters in Virginia, highlighting a number of different concerns with potential impacts on weather forecasting, cybersecurity, and employee morale. It also touches upon the removal of diversity and inclusion materials and the broader implications of public access to crucial safety information during disasters. So there's been a lot of just things that have been happening that's
kind of crazy. So with NOAA, some of the things that they look after, they look after the weather system, like weather forecasting, they look after sustainability and economics fisheries monitoring, they look after the Marine Mountain Protection Act falls under there, the Marine Sanctuaries Act also falls under there, ocean protection in general falls
there. Not only within the exclusive economic zone of the US, including Alaska, including Hawaii, including the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and the Pacific, but also abroad. There's a lot of international work that's been done that have as of now has been halted. And I want to go through with some of the things that's going to happen. And I'll do that
in just a sec. Before I want to just talk about the overall things, I talked about employee morale bring down the government wants to slash 50% of NOAA employee staff. Doge, headed by Leland Musk, wants to slash 50% of the workforce for NOAA. So that's the 13,000 people work there approximately, they want to bring it down to approximately 6,500. That eliminates one, a lot of jobs, but also eliminates a lot of the work that's been
done by all those people. NOAA is a leader in research, in monitoring, in conservation. They set a lot of the times the standard because they have so much funding, because they have access to so many different types of oceanographic instrumentation. They work with other governments in international waters to understand not only their waters and what's happening in their waters, but also just understand weather patterns and climate change around the world. All of this is going to
be eliminated. We're going to talk a little bit about what's happening in a bit. But yeah, essentially all these international government programs have been stopped. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that right now. So climate change and climate modeling. So NOAA collaborates, like I said, with international partners to do modeling and monitoring climate change systems. The studies include impacts of greenhouse gases, ocean heat uptake, sea level rise, and climate variability.
So NOAA is a major role in monitoring the health of international waters through programs like the Argo Float System, which collect ocean temperature, salinity, and current data. Also collaborates in global initiatives such as the Global Ocean Observing System, GOOS, to track ocean health currents and the global climate change. They also take care of like monitoring
shark populations. So we just did an interview over on the beyond jaws podcast talking about the updates to the sort of the overall stock assessment of the Ocean White Test. This is to make sure that everybody understands how the metric of ocean
congrats could go. And so we historically just said this disconnect between the over target you mentioned down top, ocean perception, the andTrack defeated report that just won't happen. So we have a much better understanding of how this can be more common in therey compared to the ocean joint filming system, the first question one, so throughout this visit on ONLY This is to make sure that everybody understands how the white tip is doing all across the Pacific.
So partners with various governments that may or may not have the resources to dedicate to finding such information. That helps in understanding the population of ocean white tips as well as the ecosystem health within those areas because they start to look at everything and it goes into more modeling, it goes into more shark population studies other than the ocean white tip. So having that ocean and coastal monitoring is very important.
Fisheries and marine biodiversity, I just kind of touched upon that with the ocean white tip. NOAA conducts joint research on sustainable fisheries management, addressing overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated IUU fishing studies also focus on migratory fish stocks, marine biodiversity, coral reef health, particularly in shared ecosystems. They also take care of weather forecasting and severe weather research. All hurricane watches, all the tsunami watches, all those alert systems.
All those alert systems, NOAA takes care of that, collaborates with international meteorological organizations to improve forecasting models for hurricanes, typhoons and other extreme weather events. Studies include atmospheric dynamics, storm patterns and global weather prediction models. The fifth one that they look at is the polar and Arctic studies, research on melting ice caps, changes in polar ecosystems and their implications of Arctic warming on the global climate.
NOAA works closely with Arctic nations through the Arctic Council. The sixth is marine population and debris. They conduct studies on the sources and impacts of marine pollution, including microplastics and oil spills, collaborates with international partners on solutions to mitigate pollution, such as cleanup marine debris and monitoring ocean acidification. And then we talk about ocean acidification, which is the seventh program.
Studies the impact of increased CO2 levels on the marine ecosystem globally, including coral bleaching, shellfish survival and broader ecosystem impacts. Disaster preparedness and mitigation is the eighth program. They participate in studies on tsunami generation, propagation and impacts to improve warning systems and disaster response in coastal areas worldwide. Partnerships with countries in the Pacific and Indian oceans and strengthen early warning systems.
Remember the tsunami of 2004? All those alert systems, even though they did a lot of damage, all those alert systems saves thousands and thousands of lives. And it's really important. All this elimination makes no sense. The Marine Mammal Endangered Species Conservation is the ninth program, conducts international research on the migration patterns and population dynamics of marine mammals like whales, sea turtles and other endangered species.
Works to reduce bycatch and protect critical habitats across international waters. And last one, international capacity building. So NOAA supports capacity building initiatives in developing nations by sharing technology, training and expertise in oceanographic and atmospheric sciences. Provides support for regional organizations like the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, the CCCCC, and others in the Pacific and Africa.
So some of their key partnerships, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, World Meteorological Organization, International Oceanographic Commission, the IOC, International Whaling Commission, the IWC, and the Global Earth Observations of Systems, the GEOES. That's a lot. That's a lot of international work that is essentially has been halted for the time being. I can't say if they are going to
eliminate this on a permanent basis. It doesn't look like they want to help out things internationally. Let's talk for real here. This is going to affect a lot of things. I just talked a little bit about just to summarize going to fisheries monitoring, sustainability, economics of fisheries. It's going to affect weather forecasting and warning of natural disasters. It's going to affect the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which we'll get into in just a second. It's going to affect the
Marine Sanctuaries Act. No new marine sanctuaries will be designated. It's also going to affect ocean protection in general. Now it's also going to affect the EPA. So we're looking at the EPA. They had their area stormed. It's going to affect the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. We know that Trump went after this act before. He's taken away funding for the Inflation Act that was put in by Biden, which we don't even know if this is
legal. We don't even know if the court systems will uphold this or not. There's going to have to be lawsuits. It's going to have to be settled in court. I have seen other things that the Trump administration has tried already. I know for like the DACA, I guess they call them dreamers, the people who are born here where their parents were not citizens. They tried to say that the people who were born here were not citizens and that didn't get upheld in
court. It got shot down. Obviously there's a lot of different things that are going on, which makes it really, really dangerous when we start talking about these things in human rights. But we're talking about the environment today. We're going to focus on that. So hopefully the courts will uphold all of these mandates as they are in law. There's a reason why there's laws. You can't just go in and just cut at will and
just say, hey, we've cut everything. We just did it what we thought was the best way to cut. And that's the way we did it without going through the rule of law, without going through ways to ensure that the stuff that was put in law before just can't be taken away with one swell swoop of a pen stroke or even just coming into an office and intimidating people. Right? That's a real problem.
I've heard a number of different people talk about how this is a focus on fisheries and yes, this is a focus on fisheries. Fisheries will be affected and impacted by Noah. But the other thing that will be impacted is going to be oil and gas development. There are a lot of regulations within the exclusive economic zone with oil and a big part of that is the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
You cannot harass or alter the direction of the migration route or just harm marine mammals that includes orcas that includes humpback whales, baleen whales, toothed whales, seals, sea lions and so forth and polar bears with oil and gas. So that means there's a lot of exploration that needs to happen. They have certain rules in and around those projects where they cannot harm or harass or change the route of a marine mammal. I've been on those before in
Canada. It's actually even more strict in the US where you can't even mess around with sea lions or seals. That means the instrumentation that they use the big guns I've talked about on this podcast before they shoot sound down into the water, hit the bottom and reverberate back to see a picture underneath the water. Once they find those hydrocarbon deposits, that's a place where they're like, oh, maybe we can make a drill area here. You have to be careful in what you
do. Like I said, you can't have any marine mammals within those areas. If they are, you have to shut off the guns. You have to wait until they leave. That would seriously hinder the development of oil and gas. And it has done in the past. Also, the drilling that is actually going on in the Arctic or anywhere in the exclusive economic zone of the US.
You have to be careful of marine mammals and you have to make sure that they don't alter the migration path of these mammals or even seals like mammals, including polar bears, whales, seals and sea lions. There's a lot of regulation and the oil and gas industry hate it. And in fact, it's actually stopped them from doing
certain things at certain times. Taking away or stripping the marine mammal protection act of its regulations will allow this oil and gas exploration to happen on a more regular basis without those types of regulations.
It's really interesting because the Trump administration heavily criticized the offshore wind industry for causing noise for marine mammals and stop the offshore wind industry from developing further projects while they're allowing for approval harmful projects that emit noise on a regular basis within the ocean to affect marine mammals. The hypocrisy is just flowing like crazy. It's insane. But that's exactly what they're going for. No marine sanctuaries.
That means you can explore oil and gas within any of the new proposed marine sanctuaries. It looks like the sanctuaries that are in now are free and safe from these types of disturbances and extraction for now. Who knows what they decide to do later on. So a lot of this is a big problem, right? A lot of this is a big problem. A lot of this is something that just screws with everything. And I wanted to touch upon something quickly. There have been times where we've seen this before.
We've seen a cut in staff. Not to this amount, but we have seen it with the last Trump administration where they cut some programs or defund some programs, but not to this level. Again, not to this level, but happened in Canada under the Harper administration for Prime Minister Harper, where they went through and they decided to redesign and restructure the oil and gas industry.
And they decided to redesign and restructure the programs because they want to change something within the fisheries act, which is fish habitat that we had to protect fish habitat. They just said rolling in to protect fisheries that have been established for more than 30 years. And it could be for commercial recreational or aboriginal fisheries. So indigenous fisheries and they effectively changed the law with that change the law.
They restructured the entire science sector and government sector within the environment Canada at the time and Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the time. I was there at the Department of Fisheries at the time working out of Burlington where I live now and I witnessed the change and it was horrible. They would bring people in like 2550 at a time. They would bring people in to an office and said your position has now
been affected. In other words, we're not funding this position anymore because they were unionized. They were able to find other positions within the government, whether it's under the new department or the new sectors or if it's something older or somewhere else, but they would potentially have to move across the country. To be able to be a part of those sectors
made it very difficult. Employee morale was very, very low and it wasn't until the Trudeau government came in had mandates where they actually read out the mandate for each of the departments and say, Hey, you know what? You are know exactly what you're doing. It sucked and it's going to suck for a lot of the people. Now, if you know somebody who's in the government, reach out to them.
Sam, sorry you're going through this. I hope that it gets better over the next four years, but who knows what will happen. Well, the courts will hold it up or not. I'm not going to. But that's it for my time on today's episode. Obviously not good news that we see and hopefully it will get better. Hopefully, like I said, the courts will uphold the laws of the land and the laws of the sea and hopefully the funding will get back and people can get back to their
jobs. But we're going to have to see. I'd love to hear your questions and comments on this episode to hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. Of course, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell to hear all of the stuff that's coming out, not only the US, but worldwide of ocean. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean. I'm your host, Andrew from the true North strong and free. Have a good day. I'll talk to you next
time. Happy conservation.