More federal jobs and buildings are on the chopping block in the Pacific Northwest.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is planning to jettison 10 buildings it leases in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington as the agency prepares to eliminate another 1,029 employees nationwide, KUOW has learned.

Those planned cuts would come on top of firings that have already affected the agency’s ability to forecast weather events, conduct research, and protect the ocean.

“I really thought this was going to be my forever job,” said Nicole Harris, who was the education and outreach coordinator for NOAA’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary until Feb. 27.

Harris and at least 650 other NOAA employees got emails in late February telling them their skills and knowledge no longer met the agency’s needs.

“We had about one hour to close out our records and turn over our common-access cards, which is how we access our computers, and keys to the office,” she said.

Harris administered competitive environmental-education grants for K-12 schools. She did hands-on education as well.

“As a federal program officer, my whole job was supporting grantees and guarding against the waste, fraud, and abuse of federal funds,” Harris said.

The Trump administration says it is pursuing mass firings across the federal government as part of its commitment to slash waste, fraud, and abuse.

When Harris wasn’t administering grants, she would travel to schools and festivals with a life-size inflatable humpback whale called “Big Mama.” Children would climb inside and learn about the lives of whales and the waters they depend on from the inside out.

Big Mama is modeled after the first humpback whale to swim into Puget Sound after nearly a century of absence. She was spotted off Victoria, Canada, in 1997, and has since returned with seven offspring, earning the nickname Big Mama.

“I really love working in ocean education,” Harris said. “I love inspiring people to be stewards for this amazing environment that we have.”

The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary is one of 18 sanctuaries managed by NOAA.

It spans 135 miles of Olympic Peninsula coastline and covers more than twice the area of Olympic National Park. Until February, the sanctuary had a full-time staff of nine, much smaller than the national park’s staff.

Then again, nobody hikes, camps, or drives in the ocean sanctuary, which begins at water’s edge and extends 25 to 40 miles out over the continental shelf.

Alex Avila was the sanctuary’s only staff scientist until she was fired in February.

Her research included recording temperature, salinity and other measurements from high-tech moorings tethered to the ocean floor at 15 spots throughout the sanctuary.

“It’s been done since 2000, so it’s going for 25 years this season — if we are allowed to continue.”

Avila said the sanctuary’s offshore monitoring was useful to commercial fishing operations as well as ocean and climate scientists.

Warmer water holds less oxygen. Every summer, underwater oxygen levels off the Pacific Northwest coast drop, sometimes to dangerous levels for sea life.

With the monitoring, made freely available to the public, “they would know to pull their crab traps so that the crabs don’t die,” Avila said.

She said local communities would lose out without the scientific research NOAA does.

“The tribes or the fishing communities that rely on this data won’t have that real-time data to help them decide, ‘Hey, is it a good time to put out my crab pot? Is it a good time to go fishing?’”

Avila first worked for NOAA in 2014. After getting a Ph.D. in fishery science, she started with the Olympic sanctuary in September 2024, making her one of the new, probationary employees that the Trump administration has targeted for firing across multiple agencies.

“Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters,” NOAA spokesperson James Miller said by email.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, calls NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” and calls for the agency be “broken up and downsized.”

“I really love NOAA and the work they do, and I hope that they survive this,” Avila said.

In January, the Biden administration awarded $15 million from the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s flagship climate legislation, to build a new visitor center for the Olympic sanctuary and the nonprofit Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles, Washington.

While the Trump administration has attempted to block some congressionally approved funding from the Biden era, Feiro Marine Life Center director Melissa Williams said there have been no problems with the federal building grant.

“So far, so good,” she said.

The new building is scheduled for completion in January 2028, according to Williams.

Buildings on an internal NOAA list of planned lease terminations in the Northwest include the Olympic sanctuary’s office and visitor center in Port Angeles and four offices of NOAA Law Enforcement in Washington and Alaska.

NOAA plans to abandon the lease on the sanctuary visitor center on Aug. 31.

Harris said the visitor center usually stays open through mid-October, with about 15,000 people visiting it each summer and fall.

“Where they expect people to work from without those offices, I’m not privy to that information,” Williams said.

Beyond firings and lease terminations, the Trump administration has enacted policies that have hobbled NOAA’s ability to do scientific research, a major component of the agency’s work.

In February, NOAA employees were ordered to stop all international engagements, including communicating with foreign nationals. More recently, international communications have been allowed with upper-management approval, but all domestic and international travel has been canceled, according to a NOAA employee who requested anonymity to avoid retribution.

All NOAA Fisheries employees were barred from attending a scientific conference of the Washington-British Columbia chapter of the American Fisheries Society in March in Vancouver, Canada. At least eight employees who planned to attend the March 10-13 meeting — themed “Beyond Boundaries: Connecting Communities, People and Fish”— were forced to cancel.

On Monday, all employees of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which includes NOAA, were told agency travel and purchase charge cards were being paused and a $1 transaction limit placed on them.

“Because nothing makes the government more efficient than taking away all funds so it can’t do its job,” the anonymous NOAA employee quipped.

“If they can’t put gas in the boat to go put out these moorings, will they be able to collect this data?” Avila asked.

About 16 of the 650-plus terminated NOAA employees have been rehired, according to a former NOAA employee who requested anonymity. The employees received a notice rescinding their termination: “It regrettably was sent in error. You must return to duty on Wednesday, March 12,” it reads.

But under a reduction-in-force plan required by the White House by March 13, another 1,029 NOAA employees are set to lose their jobs, according to the National Weather Service Employees Organization. The union represents about a third of all NOAA employees.

The upcoming cuts would come on top of the 1,200 or more employees who have resigned or been fired since January 20.

In all, firings and resignations could total up to one-fifth of NOAA’s 12,000-person workforce.

Alex Avila Fisheries biologist Alex Avila holds a China rockfish during a research trip on the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary in 2018.

Stori Smith Students inspect Big Mama, a life-size inflatable humpback whale used by the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary for environmental education.