Science
Trump administration cuts to NOAA threaten efforts to save sea lions from toxic plankton
Redondo Beach — The Trump administration’s targeting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will jeopardize efforts to save sea lions, dolphins, sea birds and other wildlife stricken by poisons lurking offshore, say marine scientists, public health officials and animal rescuers.
Federal research and funding plays a crucial role in enabling scientists to monitor ocean conditions — including the domoic acid outbreak that is now killing hundreds of marine mammals up and down the California coast.
The data provided by NOAA, and other federally supported efforts, help scientists figure out when and how these outbreaks happen; provide help and aid to the sickened animals that are seizing and convulsing on area beaches; and test and examine their bodies once they have died to see if it was the toxin that killed them, and how it killed them.
State and local public health officials also use the data gathered by NOAA and its funded partners to determine algal outbreaks that could affect human health — such as a current advisory urging people to avoid consuming oysters, mussels and clams off the Santa Barbara coast for another toxin, paralytic shellfish poisoning.
“Everything we do — all that data we collect — it couldn’t be done without the federal government,” said Clarissa Anderson, the director of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We wouldn’t have any of that information without them.”
A former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) holds a sign during a protest at the agency’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025. The Trump administration fired hundreds of employees at the top US agency overseeing weather prediction and climate research, raising concerns about the nation’s preparedness amid wildfire and tornado warnings.
(Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
NOAA didn’t respond to a request for comment. A NOAA spokesperson previously said the agency “remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research and resources that serve the American public.”
Although how much of the agency’s budget will be slashed, and how many researchers will be axed, is still not clear. Researchers that work with the agency have been told to expect at least a 20% reduction in the agency’s workforce and a 30% reduction in the budget.
The domoic acid outbreak currently hitting the Southern and Central coast of California, from San Diego to Monterey, has led to hundreds of animals washing up on the shore dead. Sea lions and dolphins have been observed rigid with seizures, acting dazed and confused. Many of the sea lions show aggression, or swivel their heads and necks in wild and disorienting circles.
A Times reporter this week witnessed a sea lion pulling itself out of the surf and onto the beach just south of the Hermosa Beach pier.
A sea lion rests on the sand in Redondo Beach.
(Corinne Purtill/Los Angeles Times)
Its head bobbed up and down and side to side, its snub nose tracing arcs in the morning sky. Over and over, its head arched up as if to take in the sun, and then flopped backward as if its bones had liquefied.
A few feet from the animal, a dead western grebe — a sea bird — lay motionless in the sand, its head resting on a gnarl of wood. Just a few yards away, another bird, possibly another grebe, its belly and head obscured by the sand, also lay still. Near it lay the body of a dead sea lion.
The animals may have been poisoned by ingesting fish contaminated by domoic acid, a toxin released by the common coastal phytoplankton Pseudo-nitzschia. The fish eat the toxic plankton, and the marine mammals and birds eat the poisonous fish, say experts.
Scientists know there’s a domoic acid event happening offshore because they have been able to detect blooms of Pseudo-nitzschia via NOAA and National Aeronautic and Space Agency satellites, and have sampled the plankton directly through technology, tests and protocols designed or funded by NOAA.
They use robotic gliders that can go far offshore and sample below the water’s surface. They also use shore stations up and down the coast, where they can monitor whats happening right offshore. And they use robotic microscopes that can sample and see the plankton, algae and other microscopic creatures spinning, floating and swimming in the water column (California has the largest network of these “flow cytobots,” said Anderson).
They also piggyback on NOAA research vessels — or the vessels of NOAA research partners, such as Los Angeles Waterkeeper — or coordinate with NOAA scientists who can collect and test samples, to get even further out to sea.
And as the frequency and severity of these events increase, the need for these services also grows.
A sea lion recuperates at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro.
(William Liang/For The Times)
In the last four years, at least four domoic acid events have occurred along the Central and Southern California coasts. In the past, such events were sporadic, occurring once every four or five years. The most publicly obvious impacts are the animals on the beaches, but they affect coastal shellfish farms and other aquaculture entities too.
Daniele Bianchi, an assistant professor in UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, has been studying what causes this normally benign plankton species to start secreting lethal toxins.
Bianchi said he and the graduate students in his laboratory — many of whom get funding from NOAA — still don’t understand all the factors. But their work shows a correlation between increased levels of nitrogen in the water (a byproduct of storm and wastewater runoff) and domoic acid production.
“Understanding to what extent these might become more frequent in the future, or is there anything that we can do to better manage coastal waters? These are the questions that NOAA was supporting,” said Bianchi.
Researchers have also learned that the plankton blooms — both poisonous and benign — tend to coincide with upwelling events, when deep, cold water is churned up toward the surface, providing an infusion of nutrients and energy to the plants, algae and invertebrates hanging around in the water column.
When these upwelling events occur and plankton and algae start appearing in large numbers, other creatures — such as anchovies and sardines — move in to feed, which then brings the sea lions, sea birds and dolphins.
And as those animals feed and become sick, such as the sea lion observed on Hermosa Beach, a network of stranding organizations rush in to care for the sick and dying animals.
These organizations, which include the Sausalito-based Marine Mammal Center, and the Santa Barbara-based Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute, are mostly funded by foundations and private donations, but many also receive some federal funding. And as these events become more frequent and increase in severity, so too do these organizations’ financial needs.
For instance, Sam Dover, the director of the Channel Islands rescue organization, said that he typically buys one 40,000 pound load of frozen fish per year to feed the sickened and injured animals he and his team rescue and rehabilitate. This year? “We already had to refill it. Oh my god. So, it’s things like that.”
These organizations also rely on NOAA’s scientists and researchers who are stationed up and down the Pacific coast, from San Diego to Alaska, who help the stranding network understand what’s happening in the wider ocean to fish stocks, ocean temperatures, seasonal feeding sites, etc. This knowledge enables these rescue organizations to prepare for crisis events, such as domoic acid outbreaks, and coordinate their responses.
“Whether it be consulting with their scientists around what approach to use when there is an unusual presentation of an animal in waters that we’re not expecting — be it a whale, often, or a seal or a sea lion — or a decision on how or whether and where to release an animal that’s been in our care, or whether to place satellite tags on animals that may warrant long term monitoring,” said Jeff Boehm, the Marine Mammal Center’s Chief External Relations Officer. “A lot of practical decisions are made week in, week out, day in, day out.”
Signage outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
(Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“So when you ask what it would look like without NOAA? You remove any one of the many vital services they provide, and it’s like that child’s game — that one where you start removing the pieces, and you know eventually it’s going to fall,” he said.
And for the animals who die? It’s NOAA scientists and laboratories that perform necropsies to determine the cause of death — Was it domoic acid poisoning? Or did they ingest a hard piece of plastic? — and what organs the toxins targeted.
The role the agency plays in the well-being of Californians, its wild ocean creatures and its economy are undersold, said Anderson.
“We all know the importance of the agency when it comes to forecasting the weather,” she said. “But it’s the same for their work in the ocean — we cannot have any future knowledge of any earth system without these kinds of data and models.”
Three months after his son was born, Kevin Maguire felt alone.
It was 2019. He had recently moved to Barcelona with his wife and daughter and was working on marketing projects for Fortune 500 companies. The birth of his son, Bodhi, should have been a joyous event. But Maguire, now 43, became sad and irritable, and didn’t want to be around his newborn. He withdrew from family and friends, often playing video games late into the night or finding excuses to get out of the house.
“I would take the dog out for a walk,” Maguire said. “I wanted to get far away enough that I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew and I would just sit and cry.”
Desperate for answers, he entered his symptoms online. Maguire, author of the recently published book “The New Fatherhood: Why Everything They Told You About Being a Dad Is Wrong, and How Embracing It Will Transform Your Life,” knew to look for signs of the “baby blues” in his wife. But he was surprised by articles that said men could experience postpartum depression too. The diagnosis resonated and he began writing about his condition and the trials of fatherhood on Substack.
New dads face psychological pressures, from sleepless nights to sky-high bills, which can contribute to postpartum depression. So can shifting hormone levels.
“One thing I found in my lab’s research is that when new dads have really low levels of testosterone, they might report more symptoms of postpartum depression,” said Darby Saxbe, a professor of psychology at USC and author of the recently published “Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives.”
While hormonal shifts can create challenges, they also help men adapt to fatherhood, Saxbe explained. Several hormones can spike in men when they become dads, including oxytocin, linked to better relationship quality; vasopressin, associated with emotional bonding; and prolactin, which promotes lactation in women and caregiving behavior in guys.
New dads can also experience a decline in testosterone. According to a 2011 paper from University of Notre Dame professor Lee Gettler, part of the largest study on fatherhood and testosterone ever conducted, men averaged around a 25% drop in testosterone after becoming fathers.
While dads have reasons to be concerned by plummeting levels of testosterone, a modest dip isn’t necessarily a disaster — in fact, it can make men better parents and partners.
“We often get invested in the idea that men should always have the highest possible levels of testosterone,” Saxbe said. “What the research tells us is a little more nuanced. You really want flexibility. You want a hormonal system that can adapt to the different demands of your life.”
The prospect of a decline might scare soon-to-be fathers, especially those on TikTok and Instagram, where accounts push the idea that having “high T” is the key to being a “real man,” according to a recent study in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
Influencers stand to profit persuading men there’s a widespread “masculinity crisis,” the researchers found, noting that 72% of the accounts they analyzed had a stake in testosterone supplements and treatments.
But studies show more testosterone isn’t always better. “We found that when dads have higher testosterone, even before birth, they’re less invested [than men with lower testosterone] in co-parenting a few months after birth,” Saxbe said. High T fathers were more stressed from parenting than their lower T counterparts, and had partners who were less satisfied in their romantic relationships.
This jibes with the challenge hypothesis, which says, in multiple species, testosterone levels rise when males battle for attention from potential mates and go down when it’s time to take care of the young.
While a small decline can be adaptive, dads face mental health risks when their testosterone drops too low.
There is no “normal” level of testosterone, said Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men’s Clinic at UCLA Health. Experts recommend that men should consider treatment if their levels dip below 300 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). But men metabolize testosterone in different ways, meaning a healthy level for one might be low for another.
“If a new dad comes to me and his testosterone is 298 [ng/dL], he’s below the threshold,” Mills said. “But if he has zero symptoms and everything else is going great — he’s over the moon with his new child, he’s so happy — that’s not somebody I’m going to treat with testosterone.”
He notes that the drop in testosterone fathers experience can partly be attributed to the stresses that come with a new kid: less sleep, a poor diet and fewer trips to the gym. That means there are precautions that expectant fathers can take that don’t involve testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).
Still, while some guys with low testosterone levels might not need TRT, others in the “normal” range could benefit from treatment. (Dads who want another kid soon, beware. Mills notes that testosterone replacement therapy can take a man’s sperm count to zero.)
Both Mills and Saxbe stress that men should be paying attention to symptoms of low testosterone — such as depression and low libido — rather than trying to reach or maintain an ideal number. They also agree that tending to mental health concerns is hugely important for new fathers.
Eventually, after Maguire researched his condition, he recovered after time spent meditating, exercising and bonding with his son.
“A lot of new dads don’t realize how much they’re struggling because they feel ashamed or because they don’t realize it’s common shortly after the birth of a baby,” Saxbe said.
When they struggle, fathers can fixate on testosterone because that’s what modern culture tells them will make them feel better. And sometimes testosterone replacement therapy works. But Saxbe stresses a lot of men could use psychotherapy or support groups that bring dads together, as well as more time bonding with loved ones in general.
“The thing that predicts a man’s well-being and longevity is the quality of his relationships with other people,” said Saxbe. “You can be the world’s best weightlifter. You can have a low body-fat percentage. You can be killing it at work. Those things don’t predict how happy you’re going to be at 80.”
new video loaded: NASA Announces Artemis III Crew
transcript
transcript
NASA Announces Artemis III Crew
NASA announced the crew of Artemis III mission, which will fly to low-Earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or two lunar landers.
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“I am excited to welcome you as the next crew in the Artemis journey to successfully return to the moon — this time to stay.” “I’m honored by the role that I’ve been given. I’m also very humbled by the task in front of us. But first and foremost, I’m grateful.” “So with that, the Artemis II crew, comrade, hands you the baton. You got the controls.” “As you know, we had a significant anomaly at our Launch Complex 36A on May 28. We’ve redoubled our efforts and are moving forward.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 9, 2026
Science
Santa Monica Mountains’ last steelhead trout survived the Palisades fire — and even had babies
Scientists feared the Santa Monica Mountains’ last remaining steelhead trout were dead, smothered by debris flows unleashed by the Palisades fire.
But the endangered fish surprised them: A team of biologists recently spotted 30 of the rare trout — and 21 babies — in Topanga Creek.
“There was a lot of happy dancing in the creek,” said Rosi Dagit, principal conservation biologist for the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, which works with public and private landowners to conserve natural resources.
That’s because the steelhead here are endangered, at both the state and federal levels. Once, they swam in most streams of the Santa Monicas, but their numbers plummeted amid overfishing and coastal development. Increasingly frequent wildfire has further stressed their habitat. Topanga Creek, a biodiversity hot spot, is home to their last known population in the mountains that stretch from the Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu in Ventura County.
The trout that were spotted, including this one, are part of a distinct Southern California population that’s listed as endangered at the state and federal levels.
(RCDSMM Stream Team)
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife spearheaded a complex mission to rescue trout threatened by the Palisades fire that sparked in January 2025.
Time was of the essence. The fire hadn’t yet been fully contained. But rain was on the way, which would sweep massive amounts of sediment from the denuded hillsides into the water. Fish are often killed this way.
Crews stunned the fish with electricity, scooped them up in buckets, trucked them to a hatchery and ultimately moved them to Arroyo Hondo Creek in Santa Barbara County.
Within days, Topanga Creek was choked with mud. Some assumed the fish left behind were goners.
But in March, the conservation district’s team found four. The following month, when water conditions were clearer, they saw more.
“These fish continue to amaze me,” said Kyle Evans, environmental program manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who had seen the damage to the creek. “I had seen populations get wiped out in similar situations. So when I heard, I was thrilled.”
Evans surmises the fish that survived were in an area of the creek where less charred material and sediment were swept in.
“These fish likely hunkered down, were hiding under some rocks or places to try to get away from the main concentration of flow,” he said. “And luckily they weren’t buried.”
The ones that were spotted were fairly small, around 6 to 14 inches. Rainbow trout and steelhead trout are the same species, but with different lifestyles. If the fish remain in freshwater, they’ll be considered rainbows. However, they can migrate to the ocean and become steelhead, where they typically grow larger before returning to their natal waters to spawn.
Topanga Creek hasn’t fully recovered from the damage it sustained, but scientists say it’s looking better. Surveys last year were “so depressing,” Dagit said, with very few animals, and stretches that were essentially transformed into flat roads from all the sediment buildup. Some of the riparian canopy burned right down to the creek.
Then came 32 inches of rain over the last nine months, scouring out and moving sediment, creating deeper pools. Dagit said they recently found newt egg masses for the first time in years, as well as a few adult newts and many frogs. Plants that provide cover are starting to recover.
She provided photos comparing certain pools last year and this year, some dramatically transformed. In September 2025, the Shrine Pool could have been an overgrown hiking trail. This April, it was filled with shallow water.
The Shrine Pool in September 2025, left, and the same location in April 2026, right, with RCDSMM’s Isaac Yelchin donning a wetsuit.
(RCDSMM Stream Team)
Topanga Creek is home to another endangered fish, the small but hardy northern tidewater goby, often described as cute. Not long before the trout operation, Dagit led a rescue of hundreds of these fish too. Many were repatriated to the lagoon at the mouth of the creek in a moving ceremony last June.
There’s still the matter of what to do with the trout that were moved to Santa Barbara County last year. Evans would like to bring them home to the Santa Monicas at some point, but isn’t sure if it will happen. On one hand, they could bolster the small, genetically isolated surviving population. On the other, they might inadvertently bring in a disease or bacteria. There is some time to decide. Evans estimates the creek still needs to recover for two to three more years.
For now, the fish are functioning fine in their adopted creek. Experts worried the trauma wrought by the move would disrupt their spawning process, but they had babies that spring. This year, they spawned again.
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