Q&A: What will a cash-strapped NOAA mean for coastal America?

For years, hurricane forecasting in the United States was carried out by the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The agency’s meteorologists used satellite imagery, real-time storm tracking and prediction models to create the most accurate predictions on incoming and potential storms, before they hit communities. This information was accessed by thousands of U.S citizens who checked weather forecasts almost 317 billion times last year, but specifically those living in hurricane-prone regions who would depend on this data to make critical decisions of safekeeping.  

Now, the Trump administration cut NOAA’s funding by 27%, which will extensively affect several programs such as Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, to name a few. 

The cascading impacts of this are far-reaching. Experts and scientists fear an uptick in uncertainty and mourn the loss of data and models that shouldered early warning systems and kept local communities abreast of the looming.

One such person who is worried for the future of oceans is Derek Brockbank, executive director of the Coastal States Organization, or CSO. Scienceline spoke to Brockbank about the recent efforts to reduce NOAA’s funds and staff — and what this will mean for the country’s coast.

This interview, conducted in May 2025, has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a little about yourself and the work your organization does? What role does NOAA play in your work?

[The Coastal States Organization] is a nonprofit organization that represents the 34 coastal states and territories through their federally approved Coastal Zone Management Programs. That’s all the coastal states, including the Great Lakes and the Pacific and Caribbean territories. 

[NOAA plays a] very large role in terms of how the coastal resources are managed. NOAA also provides funding for the states — each state receives funds that are matched dollar-for-dollar through NOAA. And so cuts to NOAA’s funding, and specifically for cuts to coastal zone management grants, could have a tremendous impact and could potentially eliminate state and territory coastal agencies. 

Are you already seeing the funding cuts impacting your work? What do the potential impacts look like?

We have seen significant cuts to NOAA staff, combined with a significant increase in what needs to be reviewed and approved by political appointees — [notably] every single contract over $100,000 needs to be personally approved by the Secretary of Commerce, this has made NOAA much slower and much less efficient. Grant funding is stalled; contracts are awaiting approval. This means work is not getting done; restoration not happening; data not being collected and analyzed.

The President’s budget has also proposed massive cuts to NOAA for FY26 — eliminating Ocean and Atmospheric Research, and eliminating Coastal Zone Management grants, as well as funding for National Sea Grant, the National Estuarine Research Reserves, and more. Essentially, budget cuts would eliminate money going to states, universities, and non-profits that do the on-the-ground coastal management; as well as eliminate nearly all ocean and atmospheric research being done and/or funded by NOAA.

So, that coastal education program informing communities about flood hazards? Cancelled. That living shoreline restoration that your community is putting [together]? Defunded. That new boat and kayak launch that was supposed to be built? Stopped. Better forecasting for dangerous rip currents? Ended.

What does the absence of Coastal Zone Management mean? How will it impact the coast, the fishing industry and the people that live along the coast?

Every state has a slightly different Coastal Zone Management Program, and the Coastal Zone Management can include everything from implementing a state-level regulation to passing funds through to coastal communities to do work on building living shorelines, restoring habitat, purchasing, purchasing coastal property, to maintaining public access. [This also includes] planning for hazards and a lot of planning aspects will be impacted a little bit differently. 

NOAA scientists are also known to put out a lot of science. They build models, they maintain databases. Do you also use a lot of these to chart out your own strategies?

Absolutely. A coastal manager is trying to decide whether to allow an offshore wind turbine in offshore waters. They want to know if it’s impacting fisheries, impacting the commercial fishermen, and recreational fishermen. But if they don’t know where the fish are, or what the fish are doing, they won’t have any idea whether or not a wind turbine will impact them.

The loss of their data, the loss of science has been having a tremendous impact on state managers making decisions that try to uphold many uses. It becomes trying to balance fisheries, public access, the recreation industry, and voting all those things. The manager’s job is to try to make sure all of these things happen if you don’t have the data.

Given that policymakers and scientists within NOAA have been let go, do you see this potentially translating to the dilution of coastal protection or marine protection laws?

Absolutely. You saw just last month with the voluntary retirement that came. These were technically voluntary, but they had been given notice that many staff would be lost, so they were just retiring on their own. About 1,000 Staff from NOAA retired at a loss of 27,000 years of experience. That science knowledge is just gone, [this will have a huge impact on] the states’ ability to manage their coasts. And I think it’s going to really hurt not just the current status, but also the future years as you lose the brain and the knowledge power in our federal agencies.

In reference to your work and the organization, do you believe that certain programs will be affected, and what does the absence of these programs look like? What dangers would it expose us to?

Right now, we haven’t seen any significant slowdown. It’s hard to force out whether that has been due to staffing losses or due to some of the additional restrictions on contracts. We understand that every contract over $100,000 needs to be personally reviewed by the Secretary of Commerce, which is a multi-billion-dollar agency. So things like the funding that states do have, they haven’t lost. They need to make a change. 

A lot of work that NOAA did was also in respect to climate change. Climate and weather was becoming quite unpredictable, and a lot of people were involved in reducing these uncertainties. So now that the bandwidth has kind of been restricted, what do you think you’re most worried about— in the short term and long term as well?

I think it can get back to the ability to make some of those management decisions where you were deciding where to allow development along the coast, if you’re deciding what sort of coastal resilience or coastal hazardous response or planning, you don’t have the appropriate data. You don’t have the tools to determine what future scenarios look like, nor can [you] make those decisions. Managers are still going to try to make the best decisions they can. You take away the tools, you’re going to see a lot more inappropriate decisions made, or simply mistakes made because the data wasn’t available to design [or] prepare for future conditions.