A view from the deck of an ocean monitoring ship led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Image credit: ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
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The Trump administration is targeting one of the world's most trusted sources of climate and oceanic data — the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). According to the New York Times, ships will be dispatched this month to remove the more than 900 deep-sea instruments that comprise the network, which, for the past decade, has collected crucial data on physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions from all layers of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a continuous basis.
In a statement dated May 21, the OOI confirmed that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had begun a "descoping" process, including removing all in-water infrastructure from four of the OOI's five deployed arrays. "This plan includes the removal of all in-water infrastructure from the Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Endurance and Pioneer Arrays, subject to ship scheduling and other operational constraints," the OOI said in the statement. This covers instruments stationed in the Pacific, as well as others in the waters off the U.S. Atlantic coast and Greenland and Iceland. The initiative was originally meant to run for 25 years.
In a statement, an NSF spokesperson said the intention was not to cancel the OOI but to transition to a "nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio."
"NSF remains committed to ocean science and will continue working with the scientific community on high-priority research objectives," he added.
Among the arrays that are set to be taken apart is the Coastal Endurance Array, which lies off the coasts of Oregon and Washington State. Its data is vital to scientists studying a region of ocean that accounts for about a quarter of the annual global fish catch. And the station in the Atlantic's Irminger Sea has gathered crucial data on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which some scientists suspect is weakening — if it collapses, the weather effects could be devastating.
"Sustained ocean observations are how we detect emerging risks in real time, from shifts in circulation to changes in chemistry and ecosystem health. Without them, we are effectively choosing to navigate an increasingly volatile ocean with diminishing visibility," said Helen Findlay, a biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England, in a statement. "We already know the AMOC plays a critical role in regulating climate and sustaining marine ecosystems, and there is growing evidence that it may be weakening. Growing uncertainty around its future is precisely why long-term, consistent monitoring is more vital than ever."
Removing the sensors is a loss that will be keenly felt by scientists studying ocean wildlife. Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at Georgetown University, points out that expeditions are both costly and limited in the time they can remain at sea, while the sensors provide a continuous influx of data.
"Ocean observing systems are important because they are like our eyes and ears in the water," says Helm. "They're providing invaluable information on the state of the ocean that is hard to get any other way."
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The loss won't just be felt in the scientific community, but also by human industries that depend on marine systems, she adds.
According to the OOI's May 21 statement, one network of seafloor sensors — the Regional Cabled Array, which extends from the Oregon coast to the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate in the Pacific Ocean — will remain in service "for the foreseeable future." The NSF's Fiscal Year 2026 budget request had proposed to cut funding for the OOI by 80 percent.
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Conditions in the world's ocean can have enormous effects on the climate, and vice versa. Deep water stores an enormous amount of carbon, which, if released into the atmosphere, could tremendously speed up climate change. Ocean currents also play a vital role in maintaining weather patterns that, if affected by warming waters, could lead to wide-scale chaos.
Still, dismantling the ocean monitoring system is the Trump administration's latest effort to scale down the U.S. government's support for climate research. Separately, last December the administration announced it would shutter the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a key research facility for the study of climate and weather. A court ruling has since temporarily blocked that effort.
This article was first published at Scientific American. © ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow on TikTok and Instagram, X and Facebook.
Adam Kovacbreaking news reporter
Adam Kovac is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American.
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