The Trump administration is sending ships out in June to tear up a $368 million network of deep-ocean instruments that has been monitoring America's coastal environments, marine ecosystems, and the powerful currents that regulate our climate. Once it's gone, a decade of irreplaceable scientific infrastructure — and the expertise needed to run it — goes with it.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative has been tracking how the ocean absorbs greenhouse gases, warning of marine heat waves that threaten commercial fisheries, and monitoring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current — a global conveyor belt of water whose collapse could trigger catastrophic weather changes across the planet. The station in the Irminger Sea, anchored 9,200 feet below the surface, is part of an international collaboration studying that very current right now.
Congress already fought back twice. When the Trump administration tried to cut funding by 80 percent in 2025 and again in 2026, lawmakers restored the money both times. Now the administration is bypassing Congress entirely and just pulling the instruments out of the water.
This system costs $48 million a year to operate — a fraction of what it would cost to rebuild, if it could even be rebuilt at all. Removing these instruments without a plan to store them or replace the data they collect is, in the words of one scientist, "very hasty." Another called it pushing the United States "into a rear seat in global scientific leadership."
We're calling on Congress to immediately block the dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative and protect America's ability to monitor and understand our oceans.