Donald Trump’s administration has abandoned immediate plans to dismantle a $386 million federal ocean-observation system after resistance from scientists and Congress.
The U.S. National Science Foundation said Thursday that it was pausing efforts to decommission most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative—a network of sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that tracks climate change, the state of marine ecosystems and coastal flooding. The agency said it would review the system’s future with the participation of stakeholders.
The decision came a day after the U.S. Senate backed a bipartisan measure aimed at stopping what lawmakers called the “reckless” dismantling of the network. The initiative was led by Senators Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican. Merkley called the plans to dismantle the system “the height of stupidity.”
The Ocean Observatories Initiative, known as OOI, began full operations in 2016 and was designed for continuous observations for at least 25 years. Last month, the NSF announced that it would remove nearly all of the system’s in-water infrastructure. At the time, the agency said this was intended to align spending on research infrastructure with changing scientific priorities and new technologies.
In its 2026 budget request, the NSF proposed cutting funding for the initiative by 80%, but Congress rejected the reduction.
In a statement Thursday, the NSF said that one of OOI’s seven arrays—the Endurance Array off the coast of Oregon—had already been removed. The agency plans to “redeploy” this equipment after maintenance.
Scientists and environmental organizations questioned the logic of abandoning functioning infrastructure built with hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds.
Chris Robbins, deputy director for science initiatives at Ocean Conservancy, said that abandoning a modern engineering system already paid for by American taxpayers would be “absolutely shortsighted.”
Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has cut staff and funding for climate and environmental research, and has removed climate data and reports from government websites. The federal government has also stopped publishing annual data on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.
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