By Leslie Kaufman June 20, 2026 (Bloomberg) - The Trump administration is putting on hold plans to dismantle a $386 million federal ocean-observing system after facing pushback from scientists and Congress. On Thursda...
By Leslie Kaufman
June 20, 2026 (Bloomberg) - The Trump administration is putting on hold plans to dismantle a $386 million federal ocean-observing system after facing pushback from scientists and Congress.
On Thursday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it will pause efforts to decommission most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). This initiative includes a network of sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that monitor climate change, marine ecosystems, and coastal flooding. The NSF stated that it will review the future of the system with various stakeholders, according to their announcement.
This decision came a day after the US Senate passed a bipartisan bill aimed at stopping what lawmakers referred to as the “reckless” dismantling of the network. The effort was led by Senators Jeff Merkley from Oregon, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. Merkley called the plan to dismantle the system “supreme stupidity.”
The OOI, which started full operations in 2016, was intended to provide continuous observations for at least 25 years. Last month, the NSF announced plans to remove almost all operational infrastructure related to the system. At that time, the agency mentioned it wanted to align funding for research infrastructure with changing scientific priorities and new technologies.
In its budget request for 2026, the NSF had suggested an 80% cut to funding for the initiative, but Congress rejected this proposal.
According to Thursday’s statement from the NSF, one of the seven OOI arrays, the Endurance Array off Oregon's coast, has already been removed. The agency mentioned plans to “redeploy” that equipment “after servicing.”
Many scientists and environmental organizations have raised concerns about the decision to retire functioning infrastructure, which was funded with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Chris Robbins, associate director of scientific initiatives at the Ocean Conservancy, stated that abandoning such a valuable investment, “in a state-of-the-art system, a feat of engineering already paid for by the American people, is absolutely myopic,” in response to the proposal for dismantling.