A coalition of
seven Democratic senators and one Republican, as well as two Democratic House
committees, sent letters to the National Science Foundation on June 15 pushing
back against their proposal to eradicate the Ocean Observatories Initiative
(OOI).
“The OOI is an intricate monitoring system that cost
roughly $386 million to build and comprises 900 unique deep-sea buoys and
advanced marine instruments.”
Luckily, and in the interest
of science, the push to dismantle the OOI was abandoned by the Trump
administration in response to the backlash. The senators, including Sen. Jeff
Merkley, D-Ore., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, noted that we are currently
entering an El Niño event, where ocean monitoring could be beneficial. The
senators argued that dismantling OOI "threatens the safety of our
coastal communities while undermining our nation's ability to monitor coastal
environments, marine currents, and extreme weather events." They also
argued that it threatens emergency response to weather events. They also argued
that keeping OOI going is in line with "recommendations provided by the
National Academy of Sciences in its Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences."
Real-time data from OOI is
publicly available and provides long-term monitoring for phenomena like
seafloor eruptions, methane emissions, and ocean temperatures.
The planned dismantling of
OOI is part of the administration’s planned budget cuts for the National
Science Foundation, which manages OOI. The administration requested $3.9
billion for the NSF in 2026, down from the $9.1 billion enacted in 2025. This
is a huge funding drop.
OOI was established in 2016
and involves around 900 instruments across parts of the Pacific and Atlantic,
especially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness
of the ocean depths.
According to CNN, on June 18,
2026:
“NSF announced it will halt these plans and convene an
expert panel to “identify a sustainable path” forward. One array off the coasts
of Oregon and Washington has already been removed, but the NSF said in a
statement that it is “developing plans to redeploy the equipment.” The
organization confirmed it would “not proceed with further removal or descoping
of equipment from the remaining arrays.”
“The NSF’s about-face comes amid intense backlash to its
original decision. Experts feared the US was taking eyes off the oceans as they
endure a period of huge change, with off-the-chart temperatures fueling
devastating storms and threatening fisheries, and fears a critical system of
Atlantic Ocean currents could be on course to collapse.”
A day earlier, the senators
passed bipartisan legislation in the Senate to block the use of federal funds
to dismantle the system until the NSF conducts a “thorough review and
assessment” of the network, with input from scientists and coastal
communities.
The oceans are vast and are
one part of the Earth system where we do not have complete data, in light of
the very significant changes in the oceans in recent decades and years. Ocean
data is also a key to getting a better understanding of climate change.
I disagree with the Trump administration’s illogical push to limit scientific research, especially as China, our main rival in scientific research, is ramping up.
References:
Trump
administration ditches plan to close a critical ocean monitoring system after
furious bipartisan backlash. Laura Paddison and Ella Nilsen. CNN. Updated June
18, 2026. Trump
administration reverses plans to ditch a critical ocean monitoring system after
furious bipartisan backlash | CNN
Senators
decry elimination of ocean monitoring system. Beth McCue. The Well News. June
18, 2026. Senators
decry elimination of ocean monitoring system
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