EVERETT — Anna Kagley was working at a federal lab in Seattle in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled some 11 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. She removed gallbladders and sampled bile from young salmon in search of traces of the oil.
She ran tests through the night, trying to understand the ecological effects of what was then the biggest oil spill in history.
The data she calculated by hand would help connect the oil company to the contamination in the tiny Alaskan salmon — and was a pivotal early experience in her career devoted to protecting salmon for future generations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But after 38 years on the job, her life’s work came to an abrupt end as waves of firings, rehirings and early retirements rippled through the federal agency. Kagley and her colleagues in Seattle braced each week for the Trump administration’s next move in cutting the federal workforce and other actions that stifled scientific work. Travel restrictions and limits on spending have threatened scientists’ ability to complete fish surveys and attend meetings, maintenance and janitorial contracts lapsed, and limits were proposed on protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The uncertainty forced Kagley, 54, to consider something she had no plans for: early retirement.
Kagley’s experience represents some of the deeply personal decisions that come with these efforts to slash federal spending.
In a typical reduction in force, someone of Kagley’s tenure and performance reviews would likely keep their job. But things were far from typical.
The Trump administration has pulled back billions of dollars in funding for climate programs and proposed to cut protections from toxic pollution and eliminate whole programs, like NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. The federal government workforce is down nearly 60,000 jobs since January.
Kagley faced a conundrum. If she held onto her job but still ended up being fired before her minimum retirement age in about three years, she would lose the health benefits that her husband relies on for a cancer treatment that cost $1 million. If his cancer were to come back, they would be uninsured.
Or she could voluntarily say goodbye to her career at NOAA.
The federal government offered employees who were eligible for early retirement their benefits, including health care, to leave their jobs. Everyone, including those ineligible for retirement, could qualify for a lump-sum payment of up to $25,000 to leave.
The Northwest Fisheries Science Center has lost about 25% of staff to terminations, retirements and deferred resignations. The union represented about 200 employees at the center before the cuts began.
“I don’t want to leave,” Kagley said. “I love my job, and I’m mourning it like a death.”
Ocean cruises, and finding love
Kagley’s dad worked for Peter Pan Seafoods, raising the family around fishing boats and cannery docks across the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Kagley knew she wanted to spend her career on the water, but few women were running commercial boats back then.
At 16, she was making slideshows, labeling test tubes and cleaning glassware as a volunteer at NOAA’s Montlake lab. She’d tear off a paper towel and scribble down technical terms she heard scientists use and would look them up later at the library.
Kagley worked part time at the agency while taking classes at the University of Washington and full time in the summers. She was hired as a permanent research fish biologist after she graduated in 1993.
Sailing from Alaska to California in the 1990s, Kagley and the crew would look at levels of contaminants in fish. She’d continue to study human influence on salmon disease and survival nationwide through these survey programs.
Monitoring the mouth of the Elwha River for salmon and forage fish recovery before and after dam removal, Kagley helped create a baseline for future restoration efforts, like dam removal on the Klamath River in California.
Vanessa Castle, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and then fish and wildlife technician for the tribe, said Kagley was among the first to recognize her traditional knowledge as science.
Kagley and her colleagues “contributed to the way that I communicate through the Western lens, but they empowered me to use the knowledge I already had,” Castle said. “We learned from each other — it was a true collaboration.”
Kagley is a bit of a Swiss Army knife: part scientist, skipper, mechanic, mentor and, at home, a mother to biological and adoptive kids, including Joseph, Braden and their youngest, Kian, 14, and more than 60 foster kids over two decades.
Kagley and her husband, Robert Snider, met at NOAA’s Mukilteo research station, while he was working in maintenance and getting his bachelor’s degree.
“I didn’t even really believe in love at first sight, but the first time I saw him, I was like, ‘whoa.’ And he blew me off,” Kagley said at their Everett home.
“I blew everybody off,” Snider said.
They would cross paths again on a research project in San Francisco, where they would begin to date on and off — going on to survey salmon together, and co-author research papers on mussels.
He was so “gun shy” from his failed first marriage, Kagley said, that the couple drew up a 10-year contract to prevent them from bailing on the relationship as soon as things got hard. If at 10 years he was unhappy, she’d let him go.
They felt a piece of paper wouldn’t make them more committed to each other, but Snider needed surgery and his job didn’t have benefits so they decided to tie the knot.
When their great-nephew was in need of caregivers, the couple stepped in. Snider left full-time work to care for Ethan, who was deaf and blind, had cerebral palsy, was fed by a tube and wasn’t expected to live past age 3. He lived to 19. A salmon tattoo adorned with an “E” honors him on Kagley’s forearm.
“He taught me about unconditional love,” Kagley said. “He gave it.”
They would continue to foster children with medical, developmental and behavioral disabilities, typically having about six kids at a time.
Kagley might be anchored out in the San Juans watching the whales, drinking a cup of coffee and would call home and hear chaos in the background, she recalled. Snider was very patient.
A painful treatment
About five years ago, Snider was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
It was a rare form of the cancer typically only prevalent in kids that have had the Epstein-Barr virus. Doctors originally shared that he may be too old to survive the treatment, spanning six rounds of chemotherapy. But he was given a low or no chance of survival without treatment.
“That was when Braden was a senior, and he wanted to see him graduate,” Kagley said. “And this was a big thing. So we decided to go ahead with it.”
The intensive treatment left Snider with brain fog, painful neuropathy and impacts on short-term memory and muscle mass. He struggled to continue doing the things he loves, like working on cars and riding his motorcycle. Some things felt foreign and frustrating.
He recalled telling his oncologist after some tough times, “It’s really not your fault, you did your job — you saved my life,” Snider said.
Shaken
Kagley’s federal health benefits give her a sense of security — in case the cancer begins to spread again.
Nearly four decades into her service at NOAA, abrupt changes began to rattle her relationship with her work.
In December, Kagley was awarded a diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion award. She was asked to give a talk in January.
Her kids thought it was a bad idea, suggesting she keep her head down to avoid the risk of being fired.
“That was a gut punch,” Kagley said.
In late February, probationary employees received termination letters. They were rehired under a court order but placed on administrative leave.
They were fired again in early April.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Montlake lab were taking the trash out after janitorial and other contracts lapsed. Telework agreements were canceled. Scientists were asked to submit a list of five accomplishments every Monday.
In mid-April, the administration proposed changing the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act.
“They’re seeking to remove the habitat portion of the Endangered Species Act. So basically,” Kagley said, “if you have an endangered frog, you can drain the pond, but you can’t step on the frog.”
It became clear, Kagley said, that her work wasn’t going to be a priority for the new administration.
And the way they treated her colleagues, whom she has considered family, was intolerable.
Kagley has spent her first weeks of retirement volunteering with local tribal nations on natural resources education and job training programs she started while at NOAA.
She’s looking for new opportunities to give back and restore her sense of purpose.
“I kind of bought into the American dream that if I worked really hard my entire life … I have made these huge sacrifices, so that at the end, if my husband was still here, we could travel, or we could spend time together, or whatever, and they took away my American dream.”
Seattle Times staff reporter Lynda V. Mapes contributed to this story.
