NEWBURYPORT, Massachusetts, May 31 (Reuters) – When Robbie Roberge saw flames overtaking the galley of his fishing boat last August, he knew he had only minutes to abandon the beloved Three Girls, named after his daughters.
Reacting quickly, Roberge helped his crew into survival suits, deployed the life raft, and issued a mayday call. More than 100 miles offshore, they were abandoning ship — their only hope resting on nearby mariners and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Roberge, a commercial fisherman from South Portland, Maine, had learned how to respond to such an emergency just three months earlier at a safety workshop hosted by Fishing Partnership Support Services (FPSS), a nonprofit that has trained thousands of East Coast fishermen in emergency preparedness.
On May 20, Roberge cut a fishing trip short to bring the six-man crew from his remaining vessel, Maria JoAnn, to another FPSS training session in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
“I have years of experience, but not with emergencies,” Roberge said. “That training made all the difference. I make it a point to be here.”
Safety training programs designed for workers in some of America’s most dangerous industries—such as fishing, logging, and farming—may be scaled back or shut down entirely as soon as July. The potential cuts stem from President Donald Trump’s push to reduce the size and cost of the federal government, according to interviews Reuters conducted with a dozen health and safety experts and organizations.
The impact has been especially severe for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a crucial federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services that funds workplace safety training and research.
On April 1, the Trump administration terminated about 875 of NIOSH’s roughly 1,000 employees, including most of the staff who provided technical support to a network of Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health focused on protecting fishermen, farmers, and loggers.
We’re shutting down the direct education to the workers, we’re shutting down the research,” one expert said.
Funding from NIOSH for the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association’s training programs for fishermen could run out as early as July 1, according to executive director Leann Cyr. Fishing Partnership Support Services (FPSS) anticipates losing its NIOSH support in September, which could force the organization to reduce its training offerings, said Dan Orchard, FPSS’s executive vice president.
John Roberts, an FPSS instructor and former Coast Guard search-and-rescue officer with 31 years of experience, warned that cutting these programs could strain federal marine rescue operations when emergencies arise at sea.
“The return on investment for the government is huge,” Roberts said. “If we receive funding for this training, it reduces the cost and risk of rescuing untrained crews.”
When asked about the sweeping NIOSH job cuts, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded, “The work will continue. HHS supports America’s farmers, fishermen, and logging workers.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in March that the staff reductions were part of an effort to cut bureaucracy and improve government efficiency. He added that NIOSH would be consolidated with other sub-agencies to form a new entity: the Administration for a Healthy America.
ON THE FRONTLINES OF DANGER
America’s 442,000 fishing, farming, and logging workers represent only a small slice of the nation’s workforce—but they face the highest risk of fatal injury. In 2023, their death rate stood at 24.4 per 100,000 workers—seven times the national average—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These workers often operate in remote, high-risk environments where medical help can be hours away. Fishermen risk going overboard. Farmers may be crushed by machinery or exposed to diseases like bird flu. Loggers work among chainsaws and falling trees.
Fatality rates in these sectors have steadily declined over the past two decades, thanks in part to safer equipment and tighter federal safety regulations. Training and research supported by federally funded safety centers have also played a crucial role, said Matt Keifer, professor emeritus of occupational safety at the University of Washington and former staffer at two such centers.
While the total number of workers trained nationwide is unclear, the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Cooperstown, New York, trained over 5,600 workers in 2024 alone, said director Julie Sorensen.
Some industry groups operate independently of federal funding. The Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast, for example, host 11 annual safety trainings, according to executive director Dana Doran.
But the NIOSH-backed programs often go beyond physical safety. They address mental health, substance use, and chronic health conditions. In the fishing sector, opioid addiction is such a concern that FPSS safety training now includes how to administer Narcan, an overdose reversal drug.
At the University of Iowa’s Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health, staff train rural healthcare providers to recognize farming-related risks, such as hearing loss from prolonged noise exposure, said director T. Renee Anthony.
In another initiative, Erika Scott, deputy director of the Northeast Center, partnered with the PLC to bring mobile health clinics to logging camps in New York, researching the high prevalence of hypertension among the state’s 3,000 loggers. Building trust took years, said Doran.
“We’ve built that trust together. And that trust will potentially be lost,” he warned.
‘LEFT BEHIND’
At a recent FPSS safety training, more than 50 fishing captains and crew practiced putting out fires, making mayday calls, sealing leaks, and deploying safety suits. They lit flares, pumped water, and swapped harrowing stories of sinking boats and slippery decks—cheering each other on as they drilled life-saving skills.
To Al Cottone, a fourth-generation fisherman from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and an FPSS instructor, any cuts to these trainings would be “tragic.”
In his decade with the program, he’s seen participation at each training session double—from around 20 attendees to as many as 50.
“There are so many people who are going to be left behind,” Cottone said. “Because getting this kind of training in the private sector costs a lot of money.”
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