Local scientists who study the ocean rely on data collected through a government funded program that the Trump administration has tried to defund multiple times.
That's according to Delaney Dryfoos of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with her recently to learn more.
Gilda Geist Let's start by talking about these deep-sea monitoring instruments. So, what are they, where are they located and what are they for?
Delaney Dryfoos The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a network of 80 platforms and 900 individual instruments tethered to moorings and seafloor cables off the coast of Oregon, Washington and Alaska, as well as two sites connected to the Gulf Stream—one off the coast of North Carolina and another between Greenland and Iceland. The instruments, which became operational in 2016, collect a wide range of data relevant to marine heat waves and rising sea levels, as well as fisheries and navigation. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution serves as the lead manager for the network and operates three of the five active arrays in the Mid-Atlantic Bight off North Carolina, the Irminger Sea near Greenland and the Gulf of Alaska. The instruments are measuring physical changes in the ocean, such as temperature, salinity and currents; chemical changes such as dissolved oxygen and ocean acidification; biological changes such as acoustic data related to marine life and geological measurements including seismic activity.
GG How do local science organizations here on the Cape use the data that these instruments collect?
DD The instruments that are off the North Carolina coast were actually first off of the Massachusetts coast. Even with having been moved south, the local science organizations here are using all of that data. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution uses these continuous measurements to study some of the most important and difficult to observe regions of the ocean. Suzanne Pelison, the director of public relations at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said that the project's value comes from its scale and duration, the location of sensors in some of the harshest parts of the ocean and the stream of open access data that is available to anyone anywhere in the world in near real time. So at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, this stream of data from the observatories is used primarily to monitor ocean conditions for the safety of vessel crews and research teams surveying marine life and disentangling whales, executive director Anne-Marie Runfola said. Mark Borelli, coastal geologist and director of the seafloor mapping program at the center, said that the instruments help scientists improve storm predictions and coastal flooding forecasts, as well as aiding fisheries.
GG President Trump has tried to defund this program several times over the years. Why?
DD The Ocean Observatories Initiative is funded through the National Science Foundation. The Trump administration tried to defund the program during 2018, 2025 and 2026 budget writing for the foundation. In 2026 in particular, the administration proposed a 55 percent reduction to the National Science Foundation's overall budget and the cancellation of $1.5 billion in active research grants. So, the National Science Foundation announced on May 21 that it would remove all parts of the observatory except for underlying fiber optic cables off of the Oregon coast, which the foundation said would save $48 million per year in operating costs. The agency then removed more than 200 scientific instruments off the coasts of Oregon and Washington in early June.
GG What's the latest? Does the program have funding as of right now?
DD Yes. In a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by Republicans, the Senate passed the Saving the OOI Act by unanimous consent after Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republican senators from Alaska, cosponsored it. Although the bill was not a law, because the U.S. House had not approved a similar measure, the National Science Foundation reversed its plan to end the ocean data project the next day, June 18. The foundation said it would stop removing equipment and restore the sensors off the coast of Oregon and Washington. And the foundation plans to convene an expert panel to assess a sustainable path for the ocean observing systems.
