Oregon Sea Grant at Funding Precipice

By Brian Bahouth

Karina Nielsen is the director of Oregon Sea Grant and attended a roundtable Saturday in Newport to express a time sensitive budget concern to Oregon’s senior senator, Democrat Ron Wyden. The program has received 59 percent of its funding for 2025, but the federal fiscal year ends at the end of September. Nielsen is concerned about a $1.2 million shortfall. 

Following the roundtable, I asked her to describe Oregon Sea Grant.

“It’s a cooperative agreement and it’s funded in part by NOAA and OSU and other non-federal sources, and our real mission is to support coastal businesses, the coastal economy. We do research, we provide education. 

“Hatfield Marine Science Center, folks have been there. We do all the programming and exhibits there. And we have extension faculty like my colleague who was at the meeting today, who was talking about her work. 

“So the extension functions like agricultural extension. Like we have folks working with farmers to help solve their technical problems, bring good technical information and solutions in, we work with the coastal communities and fishing communities,” Nielsen said.

‘Like a land grant college,’ I asked.

“Like a land grant,” Nielsen said. “Sea grant, land grant, it’s built on the same model.”

I asked about the funding shortfall and what it means for the program.

“As I said, we’re part of a national network. There are 34 sea grant programs in the U.S. distributed in all the coastal and Great Lakes states. And there are 34 of us. Three of us have not received our full funding for this current fiscal year. And the federal fiscal year is ending at the end of September. We are 41 percent short on our federal funding this year, and Oregon is one of three that still are not fully funded, and we’ve been getting signals from NOAA that we might not get the rest of our funding, and we’re very concerned about that. 

“As I said, the mission and the mandate is large. We have at least 35 to 50 employees, graduate students, etc. whose salaries come from those funds. And so you have a partial year of funding, you can’t keep everybody on. So we’re very concerned. We’re very concerned about losing the capacity we have.”

With a mercurial federal government, I asked if she has hope the funds will come through.

“Well, it’s not done yet,” Nielsen said. “We continue to communicate the need. We are hopeful. We know we have the support of, we have bipartisan, bicameral support in Congress, which is unusual these days.

“For fiscal year ‘26, which is the next one, both sides of Congress have thrown their support into Sea Grant. They have budget marks that are at level funding for us. They’re the same number across House and Senate, which is unusual, and so we’re very, very proud of our relationship across the aisles, if you will. That’s a hallmark of Sea Grant. We don’t take positions. We’re just trying to do good work in the community. 

“And one of the challenges is, though, that the President’s budget has us at zero, and so it’s unclear. As you know, there’s lots of administrative steps in dispersing money, and so we’re 41 percent short. There’s only a few days left to the fiscal year, and for an action to actually get that money to us, and we’re worried it’s not going to happen. We’re getting signals it’s not going to happen, and we have no idea, really what will happen in ‘26.

There was a buzz during and after the roundtable that the group assembled to speak with the senator should do more to work together. I asked Nielsen about her thoughts on the meeting.

“I love our community, and our coastal community is so strong, and we work together so well. I think you got a sense of that in the room. I talked about what we were worried about, but I think the more powerful voices in the room were the community members who were speaking about the importance of Sea Grant, what we do with them, the leveraging. 

“It’s not just Sea Grant. It’s the partnership with them. It’s partnership with other organizations who chip in, and you pull one thread out of that weaved, that really nicely woven community fabric, you pull a major thread out, it unravels the whole community. And that’s the problem. And these cuts have more impact than just that program.”