900 Instruments, 4 Arrays, Starting This Month
The National Science Foundation is sending ships to remove more than 900 deep-sea instruments from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The removals begin in June 2026 and will take 15 months to complete.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative cost $368 million to build and has operated for a decade, collecting continuous data on ocean temperature, salinity, currents, chemistry, and marine life. It was designed to run for 25 years. NSF is shutting down four of its five deployed arrays halfway through that lifespan.
What Gets Pulled
| Array | Location | What It Monitors |
|---|---|---|
| Irminger Sea | Atlantic, near Greenland | Atlantic overturning circulation (AMOC) |
| Station Papa | Gulf of Alaska | North Pacific temperature, carbon uptake |
| Endurance | Oregon/Washington coast | Fisheries, marine heatwaves, El Niño |
| Pioneer | North Carolina coast | Gulf Stream dynamics, shelf ecosystems |
The only surviving piece is the Regional Cabled Array off the Oregon coast, which NSF says will remain “for the foreseeable future.”
On May 21, the OOI confirmed that NSF had begun a “descoping” process and would remove all in-water infrastructure from four arrays. An NSF spokesperson called it a “nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities.”
The Timing Problem
The Endurance Array is being pulled during an expected El Niño event and associated marine heatwave along the Pacific coast. The array monitors ocean regions that account for roughly one-quarter of the global annual fish catch.
The Irminger Sea station tracks the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, the ocean conveyor belt system that regulates weather across North America and Europe. A growing body of research suggests AMOC could be on course to collapse this century. If it does, the consequences include accelerated sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, severe European winters, and disrupted rainfall across Africa and Asia.
Removing the instruments that track AMOC means the country will have less ability to see it coming. Recent research published in Nature Communications projects AMOC collapse could begin as early as 2055. A collapse would add an estimated 50 centimeters of sea level rise on top of what is already projected along the U.S. East Coast. The cost of a 100-year flood event would double in both the Miami and New York City metro areas.
“Sustained ocean observations are how we detect emerging risks in real time. We are effectively choosing to navigate an increasingly volatile ocean with diminishing visibility.”
Helen Findlay, Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Congress Funded It. NSF Defied Them.
The administration proposed 80% funding cuts to OOI in both the FY 2025 and FY 2026 budgets. Congress rejected the cuts both times and restored the funding. NSF moved ahead with decommissioning anyway.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island criticized the decision. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland called it a “shortsighted move.”
Hilary Palevsky, a marine biogeochemist at Boston College who used OOI data for a decade of carbon dioxide absorption research, told Eos the loss goes beyond data. “We’ll be losing this enormously valuable site where we could really contextualize and detect these changes going forward.” Restarting the program later would mean “reinventing the wheel.”
What You Can Do
- Call your senators and ask them to investigate NSF’s decision to decommission OOI infrastructure that Congress funded. Senator Whitehouse and Senator Van Hollen have already spoken out. Your senator should join them.
- Write your representative through Resist Bot and demand that the House Science Committee hold oversight hearings on NSF’s use of congressionally appropriated funds for a program Congress voted to keep alive.
- Contact the National Science Foundation directly at NSF.gov and oppose the dismantling of ocean monitoring arrays that track AMOC, El Niño, and fisheries data.
- Follow the science community’s response through the Society for Environmental Journalists and Eos for updates on legal and legislative challenges.
Primary Sources
- Scientific American: Trump Administration Takes Aim at Crucial Ocean Monitoring Network
- PBS NewsHour: Trump Administration Dismantles Ambitious Ocean Monitoring Program
- Eos: Trump Administration to Remove Hundreds of Deep-Ocean Instruments
- gCaptain: U.S. Begins Dismantling Major Ocean Observation Network
- Oceanographic Magazine: Trump Dismantles Critical Ocean-Floor Observation Network